What Is Fourth-Party Visibility and Why It’s Critical for TPRM
Why Fourth-Party Visibility Now Matters More Than Ever
Modern businesses depend on hundreds and sometimes thousands of third-party vendors. But many of those vendors, too, rely on their own suppliers, tools, and service providers. These are your fourth parties, and many risk management tools don’t account for them.
Fourth-party visibility is the ability to see, assess, and monitor the extended digital ecosystem that supports your vendors. It includes:
- The cloud platforms your vendors use
- Their software libraries
- Their subsidiaries or hired contractors
- The services they use to process sensitive data
Without fourth-party mapping, you may be blind to the exact entry point attackers use to infiltrate your business, even if your direct vendors have strong cybersecurity postures.
What Is Fourth-Party Visibility?
Fourth-party visibility is the practice of identifying and analyzing the companies and systems your vendors rely on to operate. It extends your risk monitoring beyond your first-tier vendors into the full digital supply chain.
Without visibility into this layer, you can’t fully measure your supply chain risk. A vendor might have strong internal controls. But if there’s an unpatched file transfer tool in your nth party ecosystem, such as MOVEit, you’re still exposed.
The Risk Is Real and Growing
SecurityScorecard’s 2025 Global Third-Party Breach Report found that 35.5% of all breaches originate with third-party vendors. But fourth-party risks increasingly drive cascading failures.
Key insights:
- 4.5% of breaches extended to fourth parties in 2024
- These “chain reactions” impacted multiple organizations simultaneously
- Subsidiaries and acquisitions were especially vulnerable—foreign entities were two times more likely to be breach sources than domestic ones
- Just two vulnerabilities in file transfer software (such as flaws in Cleo and MOVEit) caused 63.5% of vulnerability-based breaches
The conclusion is clear: if your risk model stops at the third party, you’re underestimating your exposure. In 2025, taking steps to gain visibility into your extended vendor ecosystem is critical to reducing systemic supply chain risk.
To shore up risk from your fourth parties, consider a few best practices:
- Require vendors to maintain their own Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) programs
- Include TPRM requirements in vendor contracts to reduce inherited risk
Key Capabilities Gained Through Fourth-Party Visibility
- Cross-Vendor Exposure Mapping
Identify when multiple vendors rely on the same vulnerable fourth-party software or cloud service, creating a concentrated risk point. - Breach Response Prioritization
When a fourth-party breach is disclosed, quickly identify which vendors are affected, even if they haven’t informed you yet, and activate incident response plans. - Enhanced Due Diligence
Go beyond SIG questionnaires. Include analysis of your vendors’ top digital dependencies during onboarding and renewals. - Regulatory Readiness
Compliance frameworks, such as DORA, often expect organizations to manage systemic supply chain risk.
How SecurityScorecard Delivers Fourth-Party Visibility
SecurityScorecard can offer continuous visibility into the extended vendor ecosystem. SecurityScorecard’s Supply Chain Detection and Response (SCDR) solution intertwines real-time threat intelligence with continuous vendor monitoring, detecting critical threats such as those from systemic risk concentrations and advanced persistent threats (APTs).
MAX, SecurityScorecard’s managed service for SCDR, can integrate with Security Operations Center (SOC) workflows and help prevent supply chain breaches before they start.
Don’t Let Fourth-Party Risk Go Unseen
In today’s interconnected environment, your vendors’ vendors are your risk. Fourth-party visibility enables you to preempt threats, mitigate systemic exposure, respond faster when incidents occur, and meet regulatory demands. Without it, even your best-performing vendors can become breach vectors.
Elevate Your Cybersecurity Strategy with MAX
Leverage SecurityScorecard’s MAX to gain unparalleled visibility into your nth party ecosystem. Our managed service not only identifies vulnerabilities but also provides remediation support, ensuring your supply chain remains secure and compliant.
