Bridging the Third-Party Vulnerability Gap: Four Key Components for Modern Risk Management

6 minute read

November 2024

by Kaitlyn Frank

Third-party risk management is at a tipping point when it comes to vendor assessments. Organizations are increasingly reliant on third-party relationships, as they must be to stay competitive, and drive growth, efficiency, and innovation in their industry. With this necessary third-party growth and adoption comes a significant challenge – the third-party vulnerability gap.

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Organizations experience the third-party risk vulnerability gap when the resources and budget allocated for effective third-party risk management can’t keep up with the number of third-party relationships (new and ongoing) that your business manages. This gap poses a threat to businesses of all sizes, hindering the ability to protect from disruption and cyber threats. Let’s delve into the key elements that make up this gap and why it is a pressing issue for modern businesses.

The Evolution of the Third-Party Vulnerability Gap

Over time, the third-party vulnerability gap emerged as a critical concern in the market—but it didn’t happen overnight. Where more manual, legacy assessment practices that take months to complete used to be acceptable to manage risk, over time they became insufficient to combat today’s third-party vulnerabilities.

One of the primary contributors to this gap is the increasing complexity and sheer volume of third-party relationships that organizations manage today. As businesses expand their networks and partnerships to stay competitive, they require more work to address potential risks associated with those connected to their business.

Vulnerabilities themselves also evolved and can result in more and more damage the longer they’re left undetected and untouched. With the interconnectedness of businesses, the impact of a vulnerability can spread quickly, resulting in damages ranging from disrupted business operations to a damaged reputation.

As TPRM leaders, it can be a challenge to navigate the gap between resources and your growing vendor pool.

Challenges in Managing the Gap

What are the biggest contributors to the third-party vulnerability gap? We outlined where many businesses are feeling the pressure.

1. Onboarding Cycle Times

Lengthy vendor onboarding cycles pose a significant challenge for organizations in responding promptly to emerging risks. Delays in the onboarding process, including lots of back and forth between a vendor and your assessment team, can expose businesses to potential vulnerabilities.

2. Response When Threats and Vulnerabilities Occur

Inadequate response mechanisms for addressing new threats and vulnerabilities further widen the gap. Without efficient and proactive protocols in place to detect, assess, and mitigate risks, organizations struggle to quickly identify the impact of a new vulnerability and react efficiently.

3. Inadequate Portfolio Coverage

Incomplete coverage of the vendor portfolio limits organizations when assessing the risks posed by their third-party partners making it difficult to respond to new threats or report on program status.

4. Assessment Backlog

Backlogs in due diligence assessments exacerbate the vulnerability gap by delaying the identification and mitigation of risks and making it harder to onboard new vendors that may be critical to business operations.

5. Lack of Vendor Prioritization

The absence of a structured vendor tiering or prioritization system complicates risk management efforts, making it challenging to focus on critical partnerships. Establishing clear criteria for categorizing and prioritizing vendors is crucial for closing the vulnerability gap and helping your team focus resources on the more critical vendors.

6. Hard-to-Assess Vendors

Identifying and assessing vendors that present unique challenges in terms of risk evaluation adds complexity to the gap, especially when you have a large number of assessment questions or your systems for keeping track of responses are outdated and complex. These hard-to-assess vendors require specialized attention and resources to ensure comprehensive risk analysis.

The third-party vulnerability gap represents a significant risk for businesses in today’s dynamic threat landscape. Addressing this gap requires a proactive approach that involves addressing each of these factors. By taking targeted actions to mitigate risks and adopting a more modern approach to assessments, organizations can strengthen their third-party risk management program and safeguard their operations.

Four Key Components to Strengthen & Modernize Your Vendor Assessments

As third-party risk managers navigate the challenging third-party vulnerability gap, adopting robust strategies and technology-focused solutions is crucial to relieve some of the pressure surrounding vendor assessments. From automated technology to a new take on data, finding ways to manage the growing vulnerability gap might feel overwhelming.

We narrowed down four tools and technologies that act as a force multiplier when implemented into your vendor assessment and risk management program. With the right force multiplier, your team can eliminate tradeoffs and resource constraints, focus on critical vendors and compliance requests, and better communicate program status to leadership.

Below are the four key components to modernizing vendor assessments:

1. Automated Assessment and Monitoring Technology

Implementing automated TPRM solutions empowers organizations to streamline their assessment workflows, mitigate manual errors, and enhance their risk management processes’ overall efficiency and accuracy. By automating tasks such as assessment distribution, scoring, and reporting, companies can reduce the burden on their teams and improve the speed and quality of their assessments.

Adopting automated technology into your program amplifies your team’s power without sacrificing assessment quality. A solid automated assessment platform should include key metrics calculations to help your team prioritize critical vendors and overall assessment scores, acting as a partner in third-party risk management instead of another tool that needs your attention.

2. Centralized Data and Risk Information for Informed Decisions

Managing risk data from every vendor in your network, updating those data points when vulnerabilities arise or a new assessment response is available, and comparing vendors to each other even when they aren’t necessarily responding to the same assessments is extremely time-consuming and difficult with legacy processes.

A universal data core serves as a centralized repository for critical information related to vendor assessments, risk profiles, and compliance requirements and allows you to manage your vendor data all in one place.

Centralized data fosters better risk decision-making and quicker response times to threats. With access to a comprehensive data core, organizations can make informed decisions based on real-time data insights, enabling them to proactively manage vulnerabilities, identify when additional data is needed from vendors, and prioritize actions to strengthen their vendor relationships.

3. Access to a Third-Party Assessment Exchange Database

A third component to modernizing your assessment program is utilizing a third-party assessment exchange, where your team can access assessments previously completed by third parties for other companies or compliance requirements.

Participating in a third-party assessment exchange database creates opportunities for collaboration between organizations and industry peers and easier partnership between third parties and your organization. By sharing assessment data, updated questionnaires, and risk scores, companies can enhance their collective knowledge base, benchmark their risk management efforts, and leverage shared resources to improve the effectiveness of your vendor assessments.

4. Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Advanced Analysis and Efficiency

Integrating artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into vendor assessment processes equips organizations with the tools to conduct advanced risk analysis, predictive modeling, and trend identification. We know AI’s use in third-party risk programs can’t be implemented without a few stipulations. With the right dataset,training, and a necessary human hand, AI-powered TPRM teams can help close the vulnerability gap.

AI-powered programs and teams can identify high-priority vulnerabilities or gaps in questionnaires, automate the questionnaire process or infer responses based on previously conducted assessments, and accelerate policy reviews. AI tools provide actionable insights that empower decision-makers to proactively manage risks and enhance the resilience of their third-party relationships.

Start Closing Your Third-Party Vulnerability Gap

These four key components not only enable your organization to scale your risk management and vendor assessment practices to close the gap, but also enhance collaboration, data-driven decision-making, and advanced analysis capabilities. By embracing automated TPRM technology, leveraging a universal data core, participating in a third-party assessment exchange database, and harnessing the power of AI, your organization can position itself on the right track for effective and efficient vendor assessments.

As your business continues to evolve in a dynamic threat landscape, prioritizing the integration of these components can help you proactively address vulnerabilities, mitigate risks, and shrink the pressure between resources and the number of third parties your business relies on.

So, what’s next? Now that you know which key areas your program needs, ProcessUnity can help you implement these components in 10 simple steps:

For a step-by-step guide on how to implement these four key areas into your third-party assessment program, download our full white paper: A Modern Approach to Vendor Assessments.

Contact us to see how ProcessUnity provides these four areas of gap management with our third-party risk management workflow technology.

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About Us

ProcessUnity is a leading provider of cloud-based applications for risk and compliance management. The company’s software as a service (SaaS) platform gives organizations the control to assess, measure, and mitigate risk and to ensure the optimal performance of key business processes. ProcessUnity’s flagship solution, ProcessUnity Vendor Risk Management, protects companies and their brands by reducing risks from third-party vendors and suppliers. ProcessUnity helps customers effectively and efficiently assess and monitor both new and existing vendors – from initial due diligence and onboarding through termination. Headquartered outside of Boston, Massachusetts, ProcessUnity is used by the world’s leading financial service firms and commercial enterprises. For more information, visit www.processunity.com.