The Role of Technology in Managing Third-Party Risks

Managing third-party risks starts with due diligence activities to maintain an inventory of vendors and the services they provide, along with a method for assessing their criticality based on the inherent risks of sharing data. Technology plays a key role enabling to scale this process and take it a step further into continuous monitoring of third-party risks.

Even though organizations might have performed third-party risk assessments at the beginning of the year, it’s possible that their business continuity plans didn’t include a response to a pandemic. It’s now necessary to understand how their third-parties’ operations and security have changed to determine if they are more vulnerable than they were before covid19.

These third-parties may have access to sensitive data, which could expose the organization to confidentiality, integrity, and availability risks. Therefore, technology plays an increasingly key role in supply chain risk management.

As the pandemic extends and corporate networks adapt to allow workers to connect remotely, investing in security measures is especially critical. Dedicated third-party risk management tools are able to detect, score and monitor risks to keep the corporate network safe, while also allowing for better financial and compliance control.

How to know if you need a TPRM tool?

Here are some questions that can help you detect the need for a dedicated TPRM tool:

Do you email security questionnaires to third-parties?
Do you ask for other security artifacts like a SOC report or Pen test?
Do you feel that there’s a lot of manual and repetitive work around your assessment process?
How many third-parties do you assess per year?
How many would you like to assess?
Is there any interest in making this process more efficient?

One of the most frustrating parts of third-party risk management is the manual effort it requires when conducted via emails and spreadsheets, which often leads management to think it’s an expensive area. However, technology enables the automation of the process, allowing for resource reallocation and savings.

Covid19 showed that things can change in a second, so the need for continuous risk monitoring becomes evident. If you assess third-parties on an annual basis, how can you guarantee that you will be OK for the remaining 364 days of the year?

You guessed it right: ThirdPartyTrust can help you streamline and automate the third-party risk assessment process. It’s a one-stop platform to:

Automate security questionnaires, scoring and analysis
Gather evidence (SOC reports, insurance certifications and pen tests)
Unify the view into the entire risk assessment lifecycle
Combine initial due diligence with continuous monitoring to make faster and better risk based decisions
Access 10,000+ third-party profiles populated with SIGs, SOC reports, Pen Tests, etc.
Manage third-party findings and remediation
Centralize communication with third-parties