In a cloud and SaaS-enabled world, organizations in every industry are increasing their reliance on third parties for key business process outsourcing. As a result, third party risk management (TPRM) has never been more important than it is today. The escalation in number of breaches and other cyber attacks as well as regulatory compliance obligations means organizations must do more to effectively manage third party risk.
The reality is that third party risk requires an immense amount of time and attention to properly manage an effective program. Most companies have limited time and resources to address the issues posed by vendors (third parties) and the overall supply chain. In-house security teams must be able to define information security requirements for suppliers, document and classify vendors according to risk, assess security posture of third parties, develop contractual updates to align responsibilities, and monitor vendor security implementation to ensure that risk issues are properly addressed.