For many years, third-party risk management professionals, consultants and evenregulators have said the same thing. To do TPRM right, you have to implement a risk-basedmethodology. Basically, you differentiate how deep you go with the risk assessment depending on thevendor. High risk vendors get a full assessment, medium risk vendors get less, and low riskvendors get … Read more
Most third-party risk programs don’t fail because of a bad tool or a lazy team. They failbecause of assumptions nobody questions. We see it again and again, across industries and across audit, risk and TPRM teams. Onesmall assumption gets baked into the process, and a whole group of vendors quietly fallsthrough the cracks. Here’s the … Read more
At some point in the lifecycle of most growing companies, the same thing happens. An enterprise prospect is sent over a security questionnaire. It could be 50 questions or 500 questions. It could be a spreadsheet, a web form, or a proprietary portal. It’s due in two weeks, or two days. And suddenly, the question isn’t whether you’ll win the deal. It’s whether you can answer … Read more
If you’re responsible for vendor security, you’ve probably received a lot of SOC 2 reports. You’ve also probably noticed that most people, including most people in vendor review processes, treat the SOC 2 certificate as the whole story. Certificate present, box checked, review complete. This approach misses most of what a SOC 2 report actually contains. A SOC 2 report is … Read more
What You’ll Learn The EU’s Network and Information Security Directive, NIS2, is one of the most significant expansions of cybersecurity regulation in recent years. Most of the conversation around NIS2 and third-party risk focuses on what organizations must do to secure their own systems: risk management measures, incident reporting obligations, and governance requirements. But there’s a dimension … Read more
Most guides to vendor security assume you already have a security team, a GRC platform, and a vendor to register that someone maintains full-time. Most organizations don’t have any of those things. This guide is for the realistic scenario: you need to build a vendor security program, you have limited resources, and you need to start somewhere practical, not somewhere theoretical. … Read more
Every organization uses vendors. Cloud storage. Payroll software. A legal firm that handles contracts. An agency that manages marketing. A SaaS tool for the engineering team added last quarter. Every one of those relationships carries vendor security risks. And for most organizations, managing that risk falls to a team that wasn’t necessarily hired to do it: procurement, operations, legal, or … Read more
Trust theater is what happens when every part of your vendor risk process looks rigorous; forms are filled out, boxes are checked, dashboards are green, but none of it would actually hold up if something went wrong. It’s not always obvious from the inside. Here are five signs it might be happening in your program: 1. Every Vendor Comes Back “Low Risk” If your risk … Read more
NIS2 Has Redefined What “Good” Third-Party Risk Management Looks Like NIS2 has not introduced third-party risk management as a new concept. Instead, it has redefined the expected baseline of maturity. Under traditional cybersecurity and vendor risk programs, third-party risk management was typically built around periodic assessments. Organizations maintained supplier inventories in spreadsheets, sent annual security … Read more
If you work in security, compliance, or procurement, you’ve probably lived on both sides of the vendor risk table without even labeling it that way. Some days, you’re evaluating a vendor before signing a contract. On other days, you’re the one being evaluated, filling out a security questionnaire because a customer wants proof you can be trusted. These are two different jobs. Most platforms … Read more