Yes—your team needs SOC 2–aligned training if personnel security and security awareness are in scope (they almost always are). Training demonstrates that employees understand policies and their role in protecting customer data.

Key takeaways

Training supports control environment and logical access criteria—not a nice-to-have.
Onboarding and annual refresh are common auditor expectations.
Role-based training matters for engineers (secure coding) vs general staff (phishing).
Retain completion logs with dates for Type 2 sampling.

What auditors expect

Evidence of a formal security awareness program: curriculum, assignment, completion tracking, and handling of non-completion (escalation/remediation).

Who needs training

All employees with access to in-scope systems
Contractors with production or customer data access
Executives (acceptable use and incident reporting)

Topics to include

Password/MFA and phishing
Data handling and classification
Incident reporting path
Acceptable use and remote work
For engineering: secure SDLC basics

Evidence to retain

LMS exports or signed attestations
Policy acknowledgment records
New-hire completion within X days of start

Disclaimer (legal note)

Training requirements follow your policies and TSC scope. Informational only.

Does your team need SOC 2 training? What to cover and how often