Five Tips for Third-Party Risk Assessments
The world has changed. There was a time when businesses could hope to operate in monopolistic situations; competition was then viewed as a significant barrier to success.
Now, however, competition is considered essential for the smooth operation of the business ecosystem. Effective collaboration is seen as one of the prerequisites for ensuring commercial success. Every day, large businesses are discovering that they need to rely on third party associates for much of their business functions.
While this does introduce modularity within operations, it also brings with it a considerable amount of security risk. When dealing with third parties it becomes essential to assess their security parameters to guarantee that they do not compromise the safety of your internal infrastructure in any manner. For this reason, third party risk assessments are gaining favor among businesses.
However, many organizations face several problems when embarking on this task. To help you achieve risk assessment success, here are five top tips that are sure to guide you along.
Traditionally, vendor assessments were carried out via phone and records kept manually. While this approach may be sufficient for smaller organizations, nonetheless it is certainly not viable for larger businesses where the number of third-party providers runs in the thousands.
So,for efficient third-party risk assessment, consider doing away with manual methods and incorporate latest technology such as automation and business analytics to ensure that your assessment method is on par with the established standards.
Do A Thorough Background Check
When it comes to third party providers, reputation matters. You need to perform a solid background check of any third parties that you choose to work with. This will provide you with a clear idea of their security practices.
Include Everyone
When performing a vendor risk assessment,you need to be sure that you include all vendors that you are considering. This means taking the steps to guarantee that no vendor is left unverified. This is especially true for larger organizations with considerable number of vendors.
Keep Up to Date
As we all know, the technological landscape changes very rapidly, and so do the needs of organizations along with them. This means compliance and regulatory requirements must be kept track of and only the updated standards should be adhered to. Same is the case with vendor risk assessments. You should always be sure to use only updated standards in your third-party risk evaluation.
Educate yourself
Keep the above tips in mind the next time you are setting out for a vendor risk assessment, and you’ll be certainly setting yourself, and your business, up for security success.