For improved profitability, a competitive advantage, and lower enterprise expenditure, plenty of businesses work closely with external vendors. Third-party relationships, however, comprise several threats, including strategic, reputational, regulatory, information security, and financial risks.
In this context, financial penalties and reputational damage as a result of non-compliance, supply chain disruptions, security breaches, and data theft involving third parties are driving companies to manage their third-party security risks more effectively.
To minimise the impact of third-party security risks on business performance and brand image, third-party security risk management, today, is going beyond static, traditional assessments. Companies are taking more comprehensive measures to ensure third-party compliance.
They’re also protecting their data, strengthening network security, and strategising incident response to ensure that organisational performance is growing from strength to strength in spite of increasing risks.
In this context, the need for modern security technology solutions to gain an integrated view of third-party risks, compliance, performance, and quality is essential. Here, risk management tools play a major role in detecting, scoring, and monitoring risks to keep the corporate network safe.
Here’s how.
Technology solutions improve the speed of vendor risk assessments
Traditional vendor risk assessment processes and communications that take place manually have long turnaround times that deter your company from acquiring a comprehensive view of the security posture of your digital supply chain.
This can increase your company’s exposure and challenge how you onboard your service providers. Today, governance, risk and compliance teams need to access and aggregate data easily and effectively to make sound decisions.
The pace at which your organisation analyses vendor information is critical to the success of any vendor risk management programme and, eventually, the value that your company brings to the vendor relationship.
The technology solution, therefore, allows your organisation to improve the efficiency of third-party vendor risk management. This is especially the case when it comes to tools that provide privacy and cybersecurity ratings, which not only further streamline this process but also quantify security performance in real-time.
It boosts the scalability of your vendor management system
Many companies are resource-restricted and do not have the people, time or tools required to do their due diligence when it comes to the third and fourth parties they work with. Concurrently, with the rising popularity of cloud computing, new SaaS tools, and outsourcing, the number of vendors and third parties in an enterprise’s ecosystem is increasing.
In this kind of environment, security teams are choosing to work with technology solutions that support scalability and provide a high return on investment. Among these tools, third-party risk management solutions, like those that produce security risk ratings, display cyber risks on a centralised cloud dashboard.
This helps organisations prioritise critical risks and execute remediation workflows and make this part of their partnership, regardless of how many vendors they work with. Ultimately, this not only helps businesses get the support they need but helps them do so in a way that ensures their cybersecurity.
The right technology solution improves how you collaborate with vendors
Contrary to what most people think, identifying third-party cyber risks is not the most challenging part of working with external partners and suppliers.
It’s really the collaboration with vendors, suppliers, and third-parties and the process of providing them with the resources they need to resolve identified security issues that’s difficult.
When these collaborations are data-driven, however, conversations with vendors tend to be more productive, and the resulting transparency supports the prioritisation of how threats are addressed. Technology, especially cloud technology, makes this process a smoother one.
Supporting your vendors when it comes to resolving their risks and improving their security posture doesn’t just benefit your organisation but also benefits the broader business ecosystem.
Leverage the right security technology solution to mitigate third-party risks
No business exists in a silo; almost every organisation today, even the smallest ones, work with vendors and other third parties to streamline their business processes. This, however, comes with plenty of risks that can undo many of the advantages you enjoy by outsourcing your operations.
By leveraging the right security technology solution, it’s much easier to reduce the time spent managing third-party risks, streamline the vendor risk management process, and enjoy greater resource savings.
Get in touch with RiskXchange today and explore how you can integrate our 360-degree security risk rating management system and leverage the right technology solution to resolve third-party vulnerabilities. RiskXchange is a company founded and led by recognised experts who have held leading roles in companies like IBM Security.
