Nearly every business that interacts online should have a solid cyber security program. Businesses are increasing their information security spending year over year. Despite the increased spend, many organizations are still failing to properly address cyber security risk posed by key vendors, supplier, or other 3rd party companies from which they also derive revenue. A recent study by Protiviti represented that the board of directors of many companies “have a high level of engagement regarding cyber security risks to the business, but less so for vendors.” Unfortunately, this lack of focus on vendor risk management can have significant negative consequences.
Poor vendor risk decisions can have dire consequences
Organizations looking to step up their vendor risk management program can look to traditional risk management models as a starting point. Risk management principles are well understood and widely adopted. Risk management principles are represented as a cyclical process to achieve the following objectives:
A well-orchestrated risk management workflow with established KPIs helps businesses move from broad risk concepts to the definition of much more specific risk concerns to focus. Risk management workflows work well for almost any risk a business might need to address, including risk concerns around cyber security health across an ecosystem of third party vendors.
The ability to categorize vendors is another important risk management concept: aligning risk priorities with the potential impact on the business from a successful compromise of the risk. So, how can a business influence the risk management strategy of their partners? By using collaborative process and a set of shared tools, organizations have a better chance of doing this. SecurityScorecard is trusted by 100’s of companies to deliver vendor risk management workflow specific to managing cyber security risk across an ecosystem of vendors and third party companies.
Make better vendor risk management decisions with SecurityScorecard
SecurityScorecard was built from the ground up to provide businesses the reporting and collaborative tools needed to assess cyber security risk across a broad range of partner companies. The diagram below shows a few capabilities that align with the broad risk management concepts discussed above: SecurityScorecard recognizes this and has built a vendor risk management solution that aligns very closely with broader risk management techniques. To learn more on how SecurityScorecard provides the capabilities discussed above, feel free to register to gain access to your company’s ratings and see how effective risk management workflow can help minimize risk for your business and across your ecosystem of partner companies.
