A risk assessment template is a tool for systematically evaluating a vendor's security posture against a business's Third-Party Risk Management standards. It outlines comprehensive risk treatment plans across vendor security risk categories deemed essential for an organization's cybersecurity strategy.
Some examples of third-party risk categories commonly addressed in a risk assessment template include:
- Security Policies and Processes
- Infrastructure and Asset Management
- Data Classification and Handling
- Application Security
- Risk Management
- Recovery and Response
This template serves as a roadmap, guiding security teams toward an acceptable level of third-party risk exposure for each evaluated vendor.
Why is a cybersecurity risk assessment template important?
A cybersecurity risk assessment template offers a structured approach to documenting a vendor's primary security risks and representing that information in a format that's easy to understand by senior management and stakeholders, including those with minimal cybersecurity knowledge.
In a threat landscape increasingly shifting towards third-party data breaches, cybersecurity risk assessment templates play a pivotal role in ensuring security teams promptly acknowledge and address critical third-party risks.
With the average cost of a data breach peaking at $4.74 million in 2024, a cybersecurity risk assessment template could potentially save your business millions of dollars in damage costs by identifying dangerous security vulnerabilities that would have otherwise been overlooked.
The benefits of using a cybersecurity risk assessment template go beyond just third-party cyber risk detection. Here's a summary of the top four benefits of implementing a cybersecurity risk assessment template in your TPRM workflow:
- Enhanced risk visibility: Provides a window into the range of third-party cyber risks increasing an organization's potential of suffering a security incident.
- Efficient resource allocation: By providing a means of organizing detected risks based on their potential impact on the organization, cybersecurity risk assessment templates support efficient risk mitigation efforts.
- Regulatory compliance adherence: Many regulatory frameworks, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS, require organizations to perform regular third-party risk assessments. A cybersecurity risk assessment template helps security teams systematically evaluate all third-party risks impacting compliance with a given standard.
- Ongoing TPRM improvement: Regular use of cybersecurity risk assessment templates allows TPRM teams to track the performance of their third-party risk exposure suppression efforts over time.
With a cybersecurity risk assessment template, organizations can monitor their third-party risk exposure in a rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape.
Example of a cybersecurity risk assessment template
A cybersecurity risk assessment template is essentially a report outlining a vendor's security risks and subsequent risk treatment plans.
Here's an overview of the components of a typical cybersecurity risk assessment:
1. Evidence used to generate the report
This section lists all the primary security evidence sources referenced in the risk assessment. Generally, the primary evidence-gathering mechanism is a vendor security questionnaire.
Vendor security questionnaires could be mapped to cybersecurity standards considered to represent a minimal standard of best practices for avoiding cybersecurity incidents. Some examples of such standards include the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and SIG Lite.
UpGuard streamlines vendor cybersecurity posture evaluations by offering a SIG lite questionnaire on the platform.
2. Additional evidence
A cybersecurity risk assessment template should also provide additional evidence sources outside vendor security questionnaires. Some examples of additional evidence documents that could be referenced include SOC 2 reports, ISO 27001 certificates, and penetration testing results.
Additional evidence sources like audit reports and penetration tests carry more weight since they are completed by independent external parties
3. Executive summary
The executive summary of a cybersecurity risk assessment template offers readers a concise overview of the evaluated vendor's resulting security posture, a list of detected risks ranked by severity, and follow-up risk treatment plans.
The executive summary should avoid technical jargon to ensure clear vendor risk treatment plan communication with stakeholders. This is especially important for critical vendors with access to sensitive company data.
4. Vendor background
An overview of the third-party vendor being evaluated and their list of service offerings. This summary should outline the importance of each vendor's services for achieving key business objectives. This will highlight the absolute necessity for onboarding the vendor, demonstrating a cybersecurity best practice of keeping the organization's attack surface minimal.
The smaller an organization's external attack surface, the less potential for data breaches to occur through compromised third-party vendors
5. Assessment summary
An overview of the vendor's performance against a set of cybersecurity categories. A cybersecurity risk assessment template typically evaluates a vendor's security posture against the following high-level metrics:
- Security Policies and Processes
- Infrastructure and Asset Management
- Data Classification and Handling
- Application Security
- Risk Management
- Recovery and Response
Here is an example of the Security Policies and Processes in the cybersecurity risk assessment template offered in this toolkit. In addition to providing a text field provisioning a detailed explanation of the risks detected in this category, users can also indicate the number of risks detected in this section across four severity levels, making the findings easier to understand.
6. Key risks
- Risk finding: The type of risk detected
- Risk severity: The severity of the detected risk in terms of potential impact on the organization
- Risk details: A detailed explanation of the risk
- Compensating control information: Details of the security controls suppressing the detected risk's impact to acceptable levels
- Risk treatment plan: A summary of the plan for managing the risks throughout the vendor's lifecycle.
How to use a cybersecurity risk assessment template
Using a cybersecurity risk assessment template effectively involves the following steps:
Step 1: Identify your Vendor Risk Management goals
Clarify the objectives of the cybersecurity risk assessment template based on your primary Vendor Risk Management objectives. For example, is the primary goal to meet compliance requirements, reduce exposure to specific cyber risks, or protect high-value assets from compromise?
The strategy guiding your cybersecurity risk assessment template process could be governed by multiple objectives.
Step 2: Send vendors the security questionnaire template
The cybersecurity risk assessment template toolkit available to download on this page contains a vendor questionnaire template in XLSX format. Sent this questionnaire template to each vendor being assessed to collect information about their cybersecurity practice.
The vendor questionnaire template in this toolkit maps to the controls of ISO 27001:2022 and NIST CSF 2.0 to provide the most reliable reference framework for general vendor security best practices.
Questionnaire template recipients should complete the vendor component of the questionnaire.
Step 3: Evaluate vendor responses
Upon receiving the questionnaire template from each vendor, outline details of risk severity and risk treatment plans based on each vendor's response.
Step 4: Complete the cybersecurity risk assessment template
Complete the cybersecurity risk assessment template by consolidating all the risk detection and risk treatment data collected from the vendor questionnaire template, and any additional security performance sources, such as certifications, audit reports, and other completed questionnaires.
Step 5: Monitor for ongoing alignment with best cybersecurity practices
Use the cybersecurity risk assessment template and accompanying questionnaire template offered in this toolkit to regularly evaluate each vendor's cybersecurity posture against the best practices framework governing these templates. Upon completing each risk assessment session, determine whether your Third-Party Risk Management approach needs to be adjusted to new cyber risks emerging in your external attack surface.
FAQs about cybersecurity risk assessment templates
What is a cybersecurity risk assessment template?
A cybersecurity risk assessment template is a structured tool that helps organizations systematically identify, evaluate, and manage cyber risks associated with their third-party vendors.
Why is a cybersecurity risk assessment important?
A cybersecurity risk assessment is important because It enables organizations to keep senior management and stakeholders informed of the cyber risks and associated risk treatment for each critical vendor.
What components are typically included in a cybersecurity risk assessment template?
Common components include a vendor summary, a list of key risks detected, risk treatment plans, and a breakdown of risk severity.
How often should a cybersecurity risk assessment be conducted?
Ideally, assessments should be conducted at least annually or whenever significant changes in the external attack surface, such as zero-day threats and security incidents impacting the vendor ecosystem.
Who should be involved in a cybersecurity risk assessment?
In addition to IT and cybersecurity teams, stakeholders and senior management should be involved in the risk treatment plans for critical vendors.
What are some popular frameworks for conducting a cybersecurity risk assessment?
Popular cyber frameworks include NIST CSF 2.0, ISO 27001:2022, and SIG Lite.
How does a cybersecurity risk assessment template help with compliance?
A cybersecurity risk assessment template offers a systematic approach to managing the primary risk categories impacting an organization's risk management objectives. These could include regulatory compliance risks with standards like the GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS.
What types of cyber threats and vulnerabilities should be included in a risk assessment?
Assessments should consider threats like phishing, ransomware, insider threats, and vulnerabilities such as outdated software, weak passwords, and unpatched systems.
How does a cybersecurity risk assessment template support incident response?
A cybersecurity risk assessment template could highlight the key risks and subsequent risk treatment plans associated with attack vectors that facilitated a security incident.
Can a risk assessment template be customized to specific industry needs?
Yes, many templates are flexible and can be tailored to address industry-specific regulations and unique security concerns, such as those found in finance, healthcare, or technology.
What is the difference between a cybersecurity risk assessment and a general risk assessment?
A cybersecurity risk assessment focuses solely on IT assets and cyber threats, whereas a general risk assessment may cover broader organizational risks, including physical security and environmental hazards.
What are the potential challenges of using a cybersecurity risk assessment template?
Challenges can include limited resources, difficulty in accurately prioritizing risks, and manually processing risk assessment tasks across a large vendor inventory.
What are the best practices for maintaining an effective cybersecurity risk assessment?
Best practices include conducting regular reviews, involving cross-functional teams, using a structured vendor risk matrix, and continuously updating controls based on emerging threats.
How can a cybersecurity risk assessment template improve resource allocation?
By prioritizing risks, the template helps organizations focus resources on high-impact vulnerabilities, maximizing the effectiveness of their cybersecurity investments.
Is a cybersecurity risk assessment template suitable for large businesses?
Yes, templates can be scaled for organizations of any size and provide a streamlined approach to identify and mitigate cyber risks.
