As enterprise IT demands expand and become more complex, organizations need to update their methods to assess the security posture of third party vendors, partners, and others in their supply chain. Did you know that security ratings can enhance your third party risk management program?
What are Security Ratings?
Security ratings are objective measurements of an organization’s security posture, defined and calculated by a trusted, independent source. These scores help you grade your security performance, as well as that of your third party vendors, by analyzing how well information is protected from external threats and breaches.
Ratings provide a score that organizations can rely on and factor into their decision-making process, enabling fair comparisons to improve accuracy and transparency in the risk assessment process. You can think of them as an equivalent to credit scores.
How Are Security Ratings Calculated?
It depends on the provider, but they’re based on different criteria and algorithms that evaluate all external-facing discoverable assets of an organization, as well as the risks associated with those assets. For example, a privacy policy, a data breach record, a match in a stolen credentials dump, etc.
The higher the security rating, the better the organization’s security posture. Conversely, poor security ratings can indicate that an organization’s data is at risk.
In order to be scalable and automated, security ratings feed on objective, externally observable, continuously available information.
How Can You Use Security Ratings in Your Third Party Risk Management?
Most organizations performing third party risk management (TPRM) use security ratings as part of their vendor risk assessments and continuous monitoring processes. They serve as a resource to determine whether or not they can trust a vendor with access to their network and data, and alert on any changes in their security posture once the contract is signed. They complement other risk assessment tools, such as questionnaires, certifications, insurances, or external audits.
Security ratings can help you understand third-party and fourth-party risk across your supply chain, including your vendors and business partners. In an interconnected, ever changing digital world, how well your data is secured across your supply chain is a matter of great importance.
The Benefits of Using Security Ratings in your TPRM Program
Leveraging objective cybersecurity ratings and risk data will add context to your inherent risk tiers, and increase accuracy in your vendor vetting and risk assessments.
Data feeds provide for great benefits:
- They are always up-to-date
- They complement point-in-time vendor risk assessment techniques like questionnaires and penetration tests
- They provide a quick view of the health of your vendor ecosystem
- They alert on cybersecurity findings so you can remediate any gaps
How To Integrate Security Ratings Into Your TPRM Lifecycle With ThirdPartyTrust
Security ratings can be easily integrated into the ThirdPartyTrust TPRM platform as an objective indicator of a vendor’s cybersecurity performance. We partner with the most robust data feed providers: BitSight, RiskRecon, Security Scorecard, Osano, SpyCloud, Argos Risk, HackNotice, Supply Wisdom, Blue Voyant, and more.
These integrations will allow you to combine end-to-end risk assessment automation with continuous monitoring, comparing the scores of your third parties to their industry averages across a number of security vectors.
By combining security scores with ThirdPartyTrust’s risk assessment automation, you will benefit from the most robust dataset for making vendor risk decisions and additional intelligence to complement your third party risk executive reporting.
ThirdPartyTrust empowers our customers to explore and utilize the best partners in our ecosystem to drive value at every stage of the vendor risk assessment process.
Take advantage of our TPRM automation platform with 10+ integrated data feeds to improve the effectiveness of your third party risk assessments. Learn how ThirdPartyTrust could help your organization.
Risk assessments should not be a killer
Rising regulatory pressure is coupled by increasing third party risks. As a result, enterprises and third parties are taking greater measures to assess and manage risk across their supply chain.
This strategy guide explains how to make third party risk management easier, solving security and compliance problems for both sides of the equation.
