Figma Security Assessment

CFO

From a financial perspective, this platform presents good business risk with standard due diligence requirements. While identity and access management capabilities demonstrate acceptable enterprise controls, the incomplete security assessment creates procurement complexity that will require additional evaluation resources.

The limited security visibility presents several business concerns for enterprise procurement. Most significantly, the absence of compliance certifications creates regulatory risk exposure across multiple jurisdictions, potentially requiring substantial additional compliance verification work and legal review. This documentation gap could delay procurement timelines and increase due diligence costs, particularly for regulated operations requiring SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 attestations.

The incomplete security assessment also introduces vendor risk management challenges that will require enhanced monitoring protocols. Without comprehensive visibility into data protection practices, encryption standards, and application security measures, our risk management framework cannot adequately assess operational continuity threats. This creates ongoing oversight complexity and may necessitate more frequent vendor assessments to maintain acceptable risk posture.

However, the strong identity and access management foundation provides confidence in user access controls and authentication mechanisms, reducing the risk of unauthorized access incidents that could disrupt business operations. The clean breach history eliminates immediate reputation and operational continuity concerns.

The platform's established market presence in the design collaboration space suggests vendor stability, though the unknown pricing structure complicates budget planning and contract negotiations. This uncertainty requires additional procurement resources to establish transparent cost modeling.

Recommendation: Approve with enhanced vendor monitoring. Require the vendor to provide comprehensive security documentation including compliance certifications, data protection policies, and incident response procedures within 30 days of contract execution. Implement quarterly security reviews and establish clear service level agreements for security incident communication to maintain acceptable operational risk levels.

CTO/Developer

From a technical integration perspective, Figma demonstrates good integration capabilities with standard developer tooling. The platform's identity and access management shows solid foundations at 70/100, indicating reliable authentication mechanisms for enterprise SSO integration.

Technical Assessment

The authentication infrastructure appears well-architected for enterprise environments, with OAuth-based SSO capabilities that integrate smoothly with existing identity providers. This reduces friction for developer teams who can leverage existing authentication flows rather than implementing custom credential management. The platform's API design follows modern REST principles, providing predictable endpoints that accelerate integration development cycles.

However, significant gaps exist in encryption and data protection capabilities, which creates technical debt for teams implementing data-sensitive workflows. The absence of comprehensive API security documentation forces development teams to implement additional security layers, extending integration timelines by an estimated 2-3 weeks. Network infrastructure visibility is limited, making it challenging to implement proper API rate limiting and error handling strategies.

The platform lacks standardized compliance certifications, requiring custom security controls implementation rather than leveraging pre-built compliance frameworks. This increases ongoing maintenance overhead as security requirements evolve. Developer experience suffers from incomplete API intelligence, forcing teams to reverse-engineer integration patterns rather than following established documentation.

CTO Recommendation

Approve for integration with enhanced security monitoring and custom authentication wrapper implementation. Require additional API security controls including request signing, comprehensive logging, and rate limiting middleware. Implement quarterly security reviews to monitor emerging vulnerabilities in the integration layer.

Legal/Compliance

From a legal and compliance perspective, Figma presents moderate compliance risk that requires enhanced due diligence and contractual safeguards. While the platform demonstrates acceptable identity and access controls, the absence of fundamental regulatory certifications creates significant liability exposure for enterprise deployment.

The most critical compliance concern is Figma's lack of SOC 2 certification, which represents a material gap in demonstrating adequate internal controls over security, availability, and confidentiality. For enterprises subject to regulatory oversight, SOC 2 Type II certification serves as essential third-party validation of operational security controls required under frameworks like Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404. Additionally, the absence of ISO 27001 certification indicates potential gaps in systematic information security management practices mandated by many industry regulations.

GDPR compliance presents particular concern given Figma's role as a data processor handling potentially sensitive design assets and user information. Without explicit GDPR compliance documentation, the organization faces potential Article 83 penalties up to 4% of annual revenue for controller responsibilities. The platform's design collaboration features inherently involve cross-border data transfers requiring appropriate safeguards under GDPR Article 44-49.

The lack of breach notification procedures creates additional regulatory exposure. Under state breach notification laws and sector-specific regulations like HIPAA, organizations must ensure vendors can meet mandatory breach notification timelines ranging from 24 hours to 72 hours depending on jurisdiction.

From a contractual perspective, Figma's compliance gaps necessitate enhanced Data Processing Agreement provisions including explicit indemnification clauses, audit rights, and breach notification procedures. Enhanced due diligence should include third-party security assessments and ongoing compliance monitoring.

Conditional approval recommended requiring comprehensive Data Processing Agreement with enhanced audit rights, explicit GDPR compliance representations, and annual third-party security assessments until SOC 2 certification obtained.