Everything IT will ask before approving Sprout: A security, SSO, and integration checklist

• Sprout runs on Microsoft Azure, with its primary region in Singapore and backup and disaster recovery in Hong Kong.
• Sprout HR and Sprout Payroll are certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022, and Sprout Payroll has a SOC 2 Type II report available under NDA.
• Data is encrypted with AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2 in transit, and an external penetration test is run every year.
• Sprout supports SSO with identity providers such as Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, PingOne, and Keycloak through SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect.
• Integrations can be tested in a shared sandbox that never contains live production data before moving to production.
• Sidekick is built into Sprout HR, and it only returns what a user’s Sprout HR access already allows.
• Your company remains the personal information controller under the Data Privacy Act, so confirm breach notification and data return terms in your contract.

Before approving Sprout, IT teams usually ask about six things:

• Where employee data is hosted.
• Which security certifications Sprout holds.
• How access and single sign-on (SSO) work.
• How Sprout connects with an existing HRIS.
• How integrations are tested.
• How incidents are handled.

In short: Sprout runs on Microsoft Azure in Singapore, is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022, supports SSO through SAML 2.0 and OpenID Connect, and provides a sandbox for testing integrations before go-live.

Getting HR and Finance on board with a new HR and payroll platform is only one part of the process. It matters because HR and payroll systems handle sensitive information, from employee records and attendance to compensation and government ID numbers. In 2024, 62.5% of ICT-device users aged 10 and over in the Philippines experienced at least one cybersecurity incident, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority’s 2024 National ICT Household Survey.

This guide answers each question directly and links to the documents your IT team can review.

Sprout hosts employee data on Microsoft Azure. The primary region is Singapore (Southeast Asia), and backup and disaster recovery run in Hong Kong (East Asia). Each client’s data is logically separated from other clients’ data, and any authorized support access is logged and audited.

If your IT team is evaluating the platform, Sprout’s Trust Center provides details on its hosting environment, security controls, certifications, encryption, access management, and business continuity.

Your company owns its data. If a contract ends, you have 30 days to export your data before it is permanently deleted, and Sprout can provide a Certificate of Data Destruction on request. Write these terms into your contract. Sprout’s guide on how large Philippine companies should procure HR and payroll software lists the data export and exit clauses to look for.

Sprout complies with the Data Privacy Act of 2012 (RA 10173) and its Implementing Rules and Regulations. The law requires organizations handling personal information to put reasonable and appropriate organizational, physical, and technical measures in place to protect it. Because Sprout’s data centers are outside the Philippines, involve your Data Protection Officer early. Under the Act, your company remains accountable for personal information it transfers to a third party for processing, whether locally or abroad. 

For a refresher, see Sprout’s primer on the Data Privacy Act and its guide to HR data security and NPC compliance.

Sprout HR and Payroll are certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022, the international standard for information security management systems. IT teams can download the certificate directly.

Sprout Payroll also has a SOC 2 Type II report, which Sprout shares once a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is in place. SOC 2 is an attestation report issued by an independent CPA firm under the AICPA’s SOC reporting framework, not a certificate. Ask for the report itself and check the period it covers.

Sprout encrypts data at rest with AES-256 and data in transit with TLS 1.2. It also:

• Runs an annual external vulnerability assessment and penetration test (VAPT), with executive summaries published in the Trust Center.
• Uses static and dynamic application security testing during development.
• Keeps production and non-production environments separate.

Sprout supports role-based access control (RBAC), authentication controls, and configurable settings such as SSO, IP whitelisting, and session timeouts to help limit access to workforce data. This means an HR administrator, Finance user, manager, and employee can have different levels of access to information such as compensation, attendance, employee records, and payroll.

On Sprout’s side, multifactor authentication is required for production access, and internal access is reviewed quarterly under a least-privilege model.

Security is still a shared responsibility. Sprout secures the platform and infrastructure, while your administrators decide who gets access and review it over time. Sprout’s HR SaaS security guide breaks down who owns what.

The same applies to Sidekick, Sprout’s built-in AI companion, which follows each user’s existing Sprout HR permissions. More on this below.

Yes. Sprout supports single sign-on (SSO), allowing organizations to connect Sprout to their existing identity and access management setup. In SSO Integration Mode, Sprout connects to external identity providers such as Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory), Okta, PingOne, and Keycloak. It also supports other providers that use SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect/OAuth 2.0.

Employees can use the company’s existing authentication process instead of managing a separate set of credentials for the HR and payroll platform. It also allows the organization to apply its existing identity and access policies when employees sign in.

Treat SSO as a planned rollout rather than a quick toggle:

• It is turned on by request through Sprout Experts or your Customer Success Manager (CSM), not from within the app.
• It applies to the whole tenant, so you can’t enable it for selected users only.
• Activation resets existing user credentials.
• Each user needs a unique primary email address, because activation invitations are sent there.
• If you use SSO for both Sprout HR and Sprout Payroll, HR and Payroll Full Sync needs to be on so users are managed in one place.
• Your IT team registers Sprout in your identity provider and shares the SAML metadata or OpenID settings with Sprout.

Sprout’s SSO documentation outlines the technical requirements and setup. IT teams should review these early, especially if the organization uses a specific identity provider or authentication setup. SSO Mode also needs to be enabled to activate Sidekick on Sprout HR.

Yes. If the company already uses a global HR platform such as Workday or SAP SuccessFactors, you don’t need to replace it to support Philippine payroll.

You just need to decide where each system fits. Workday, for example, can continue managing global employee and organizational data, while Sprout handles Philippine payroll calculations, statutory deductions, and local reporting. In a typical setup, employee master data flows from the global HRIS into Sprout through secure APIs, and the global system stays the authoritative source for workforce data.

IT will usually need to clarify three things:

1. Which system is the source of truth?
2. What employee data needs to move between the systems?
3. Which system will handle Philippine payroll and local compliance?

If your company is currently using Workday, Sprout provides a guide to connecting a global HRIS with Philippine payroll, including how the two systems can work together without replacing the existing global setup. To scope the project, use Sprout’s HRIS integration checklist for the Philippines.

Yes. Sprout provides a sandbox environment where IT teams can build and test integrations before connecting them to production systems. The sandbox is a shared, non-production environment available 24/7. It can be set up blank or preloaded with dummy data, and it never contains live production data.

Through the Sprout Developer Portal, teams can explore available APIs, and test requests. API access is provisioned rather than self-serve, and Sprout issues one API key per client so every API call can be tracked.

The specific environment, credentials, API access, and endpoints will depend on the integration, so it helps to define the use case and data requirements first. IT teams can start with the Developer Portal and review the API documentation relevant to the integration they’re planning.

That depends on what the company needs to connect. Sprout’s developer platform includes APIs for authorization, employee data, general HR, payroll, and time and attendance, along with webhooks.

These can support different integration needs, such as syncing employee information with another system, pulling payroll data, or sending attendance data to an external application. Sprout’s integration use cases show common examples.

Authentication uses a familiar pattern. Your client ID and client secret are exchanged for a bearer token through a standard OAuth 2.0 client credentials flow, and a subscription key is included in every request header.

IT should also decide early between two credential types:

• Full-Access returns complete records, including confidential fields such as current payroll information and salary history.
• Restricted-Access leaves out those confidential sections, which limits how much sensitive data leaves Sprout.

The important thing for IT is to check the specific APIs and endpoints needed for the integration. The required permissions, credentials, and data fields will depend on what the company is trying to connect.

Sprout HR natively integrates with Sprout Payroll, connecting employee information, attendance, leave, payroll, and compliance in one seamless workflow.

For IT, this matters because these processes can work from the same set of employee data instead of creating separate systems and manual handoffs. For example, attendance and leave data can feed into payroll so that HR or Finance teams don’t have to reconcile the same information across different systems. Sprout’s guide to HR and payroll system integration explains what a unified stack means for IT leaders.

Learn more about Sprout HR and Sprout Payroll.

Sidekick is built into Sprout HR, so it doesn’t require a separate HR system or another integration to access employee information. It uses HR, payroll, and compliance data to help answer everyday questions from employees and managers.

Access still depends on the user’s existing permissions. Employees can ask about their own HR and payroll information, while managers and administrators see information available to them based on their roles. In practice:

• Sidekick mirrors each user’s Sprout HR viewing scope.
• If someone asks about an employee outside that scope, Sidekick won’t return the details or confirm the person exists.
• Employee lookups are read-only, and sensitive lookups are logged for compliance.
• Salary, payroll, and bank details are not available through lookup.
• Users can delete their Sidekick conversations at any time.

Sidekick is also designed to support people rather than make decisions for them, in line with Sprout’s people-first approach to AI. It provides answers and guidance, while employees, managers, and HR teams remain responsible for taking action.

If you want a deeper look at Sidekick’s role in HR and payroll workflows, Sprout’s January 2026 webinar, From Questions to Confident Action: AI Support in Everyday HR and Payroll Work, also provides a product walkthrough. The recap of an earlier session, The Future of HR Workflows: Live Demo of AI in Action, covers Sprout’s AI tools in a live demo. 

For a wider view of how Filipino employees are adopting AI at work, see Sprout’s State of HR 2026 report, based on insights from more than 3,500 employees.

Sprout backs up data daily and tests its disaster recovery plan every year. Its targets are a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 6 hours and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 24 hours. Cloud security monitoring is in place to detect misconfigurations and anomalies. Sprout’s Trust Center provides more information on its security program, monitoring, business continuity, disaster recovery, and related controls.

Incident response is also relevant to data privacy. The National Privacy Commission requires notification of certain personal data breaches within 72 hours under NPC Circular 16-03 when the conditions for notification are met. A full breach report generally follows within five days. In May 2026, the NPC issued Advisory No. 2026-02, which clarifies how breach notifications and related requests are filed through its Data Breach Notification Management System.

Your company is typically the personal information controller, so the duty to notify the NPC and affected employees sits with you. The 72-hour period can start once either your company or its processor knows about a breach, so how quickly Sprout notifies you matters. IT should therefore confirm the vendor’s incident notification process, escalation channels, responsibilities, and contractual commitments before implementation.

Your IT team can start with these resources:

• Security and compliance: Sprout Trust Center (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certificate, VAPT summaries, and SOC 2 Type II request)
• SSO: SSO Mode overview and SSO Integration Mode guide
• HR platform: Sprout HR
• Payroll platform: Sprout Payroll
• Integrations: Sprout Developer Portal
• Global HRIS integration: Global HRIS and Philippine payroll guide
• AI support: Sidekick
• General vendor security questions: HR SaaS security guide
• Protecting payroll data: Payroll security framework

Every company’s setup is different. If your IT team needs to review security, SSO, access controls, integrations, data handling, or implementation requirements, the Sprout team can walk you through how the platform fits with your existing environment and how implementation works.

Sprout runs on Microsoft Azure. Its primary region is Singapore, with backup and disaster recovery in Hong Kong. Each client’s data is logically separated, and hosting and security details are published in the Sprout Trust Center.

Yes. Sprout HR, Sprout Payroll, and Sprout’s Payroll Professional Services are certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022. Sprout Payroll also has a SOC 2 Type II report, an independent attestation that Sprout shares after an NDA is signed.

Yes. Sprout supports single sign-on (SSO), allowing organizations to use their existing identity and authentication setup. It works with identity providers such as Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, PingOne, and Keycloak through SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect/OAuth 2.0. SSO Mode also needs to be enabled to activate Sidekick on Sprout HR.

Yes. Sprout uses role-based permissions and access controls so users can access information based on their responsibilities. Sidekick follows the same permissions when providing HR and payroll information.

Yes, depending on the system and the use case. Companies using a global HRIS such as Workday can keep it as the system of record while Sprout handles Philippine payroll. Sprout provides APIs and integration resources to connect with external systems. The specific data flow, permissions, and access requirements will depend on the integration.

Yes. Sprout provides a shared, non-production sandbox for building and testing integrations. It can be blank or preloaded with dummy data and never contains live production data. Production access is requested through your CSM.

No. Sidekick is built into Sprout HR. It uses information within Sprout to help employees and managers with HR, payroll, and compliance questions while following their existing access permissions.

Your data belongs to your company. When a contract ends, you have 30 days to export it before it is permanently deleted, and Sprout can issue a Certificate of Data Destruction on request.

Generally, your company, as the personal information controller, notifies the NPC and affected employees within 72 hours when a breach meets the notification conditions. Confirm how quickly Sprout will notify you as part of your contract review.

IT should look at the areas that matter most to the organization’s setup, including security, hosting, access controls, authentication, integrations, testing, incident response, business continuity, and contractual requirements.