As outsourcing significant business functions is now common practice for most organizations, major third-party data breaches are rapidly taking over news headlines.
Ponemon Institute and IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report found the average cost of a breach has increased from $370,000 to $4.35 million, with third-party involvement listed as one of the main reasons. An eSentire survey from the same year highlights that 44% of firms surveyed have experienced a significant data breach caused by a third-party vendor.
With Gartner reporting 60% of organizations as having 1000+ third-party relationships, effectively managing the cybersecurity risks they create and practicing vendor due diligence proves increasingly difficult.
Information security teams often also rely on manual risk reporting methods which are time and labor-intensive. Many organizations are now turning to automated third-party risk management (TPRM) solutions that automate data breach detection capabilities, provide real-time insights, and streamline remediation workflows.
We assess three TPRM solutions, BitSight, SecurityScorecard, and UpGuard, to help you make an informed decision before investing in the right solution for your needs.
BitSight Technologies
BitSight Technologies is a Cambridge-based company that aims to quantify the external cybersecurity posture of organizations using publicly accessible data. Its FICO-like BitSight security rating is used by underwriters at insurance companies for pricing cyber insurance, 3rd party research for third-party risk teams, and due diligence research for private equity and M&A activities, and more.
Additionally, security ratings can be used for security performance management and the assessment of third and fourth-party risk.
SecurityScorecard
SecurityScorecard is a New York-based security ratings platform that uses traffic and other publicly accessible data to build security ratings to evaluate vendors and manage cyber risk among other use cases.
SecurityScoreCard also monitors "hacker chatter" and other public data feeds for indicators of compromise.