SecurityScorecard Reduced External Third-Party Breaches by 75%

Forrester Total Economic Impact^TM Study: Automatic vendor detection, risk identification, and mitigation holistically manage supply chain cyber risk

The interconnected nature of our digital economy requires a shift in how companies think about their cyber risk. Companies need to consider the broader system and how to build mutual support with their entire cyber ecosystem– customers, partners, and vendors.

Yet, today, most companies still rely on manual vendor onboarding, monitoring, and point-in-time external security reports to manage supply chain cyber risk – even top Fortune 500 companies.

According to a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of SecurityScorecard, “These methods proved time-consuming and ineffective as external reports were often outdated and the organizations lacked the internal resources to scale and manage their entire vendor networks, leaving them vulnerable to undetected digital supply chain threats.”

Key challenges

The study was based on a composite organization representative of interviewed customers. The interviewees’ organizations searched for a solution that could:

• Provide the ability to onboard critical vendors efficiently to improve service delivery and enhance potential business opportunities.
• Offer a holistic third-party management tool with features identifying and addressing third-party risks across the ecosystem.
• Enhance scalability to meet growing vendor monitoring and management needs.
• Enable the organizations to Self-monitor their own cyber risk exposure and ratings.
• Help maintain security engineering headcount and avoid hiring additional security engineers to keep up with growing critical vendor volume.

“SecurityScorecard has been transformative — going beyond being a cyber ratings provider and providing a unique and valuable perspective on third-party risk Management.”

 –Senior Manager of Cybersecurity, Banking

Strengthen third-party and supply-chain security

Our customers implement SecurityScorecard to achieve multiple outcomes. According to customer interviews, CISOs deploy SecurityScorecard because of:

• Numerous headlines about companies being breached through third parties, with ransomware attacks on the rise.

• Increase in supply chain risks, both through public reporting and internal analysis. Understanding the attack surface and security posture of third parties is now crucial.

• Scale and resources. Hiring enough people to perform this work manually is not feasible, and it would have been better investments.

• Board reporting. SecurityScorecard provided an easier way to consume information and relay it to the C-suite and the board of directors.

“To manage our current critical vendors and onboard new ones as needed, we would need ten additional FTEs at the security engineering level.”

– Senior Director, Information Security, B2B distribution organization.

Key findings from the TEI of SecurityScorecard study

ROI of 176%

One of the most notable findings from the Forrester Total Economic ImpactTM study was the significant return on investment (ROI) that may be experienced by organizations implementing SecurityScorecard’s platform.

The composite organization achieved an ROI of 176%, which we believe indicates that the benefits far outweighed the costs associated with adoption and integration. The study was based on a comprehensive analysis of SecurityScorecard’s platform and its impact on enhancing security, improving productivity, and delivering substantial financial benefits.

SecurityScorecard delivered an ROI of 176%

Avoided security engineering hires for third-party risk management and monitoring

With a comprehensive, automated cyber risk platform, SecurityScorecard helps organizations like yours effectively manage their security engineering needs, allowing you to handle the increased demands of expanding your vendor network monitoring and enhancing your third-party security posture without additional hires. This cost avoidance grows linearly as additional critical vendors are onboarded. The cost avoidance for the composite organization of security engineering hires is worth more than $3.8 million over three years.

Avoiding security engineering hires is worth more than $3.8 million over three years.

Strengthened third-party and supply chain security

With the ability to identify and mitigate its previously undetected digital supply chain vulnerabilities, customers greatly reduced third-party risk exposure to network and surface attacks. Customers can prevent expensive data breaches by enhancing its cybersecurity practices in its vendor network. Such breaches would not only result in direct revenue loss but can also cause significant downtime for network access employees. Additionally, these breaches can lead to long-lasting reputational damage, affecting both customer retention and acquisition. This third-party and supply chain security improvement offered the composite organization a risk-adjusted benefit of $1.7 million over three years.

Efficiencies in critical vendor onboarding

Onboarding new critical vendors in the composite organization’s legacy environment, which was characterized by manual processes and limited visibility, required significant security engineering resources to complete the necessary risk assessment tasks. These tasks included time-consuming security research and extensive communication with individual vendors. Due to SecurityScorecard’s comprehensive risk mitigation services, ratings, and automated features, the security engineering team decreases the overall duration of critical vendor onboarding activities by 75%, leading to a three-year, risk-adjusted efficiency improvement worth $503,000 to the composite organization.

Final thoughts

Forrester’s TEI study for SecurityScorecard offers valuable insights into the platform’s impact. The study’s key findings demonstrate and quantify, based on real SecurityScorecard data, the platform’s impact on enhancing security, improving productivity, and delivering substantial financial benefits.

As businesses drive to meet the growing demands of a digitally-driven world, adopting SecurityScorecard’s solutions can become a strategic imperative and a competitive advantage. With continuous attack surface and vendor monitoring, as well as real-time data on third-party threats, SecurityScorecard offers enterprises a platform to monitor and manage digital third-party, supply chain, and attack surface vulnerabilities.

With its comprehensive, automatic vendor detection, risk identification, and mitigation features, enterprises can holistically manage their online risk exposure within the critical third-party space. Strong API capabilities and automation enable organizations to avoid costly breaches and achieve significant efficiencies.