Vendor Risk Management is critical for reducing the impact of security risks associated with third-party vendors. But often included with this cybersecurity practice is a bloat of administrative processes that disrupt workflows and impact VRM efficacy, defeating the purpose of even having a VRM program.
To establish a scalable Vendor Risk Management program, cybersecurity teams should take advantage of every opportunity to replace manual processes with automation technology.
To help you choose a vendor risk remediation solution that maximizes your ROI, this post outlines three remediation processes that an ideal solution should be capable of automating.
Learn how UpGuard streamlines Vendor Risk Management >
1. Vendor Risk Assessment Workflows
Solely focusing on automating processes specific to risk remediation won’t take advantage of your efficiency-improving potential. You must assume a holistic approach by considering related processes impacting remediation workflows. Remediation tasks map to all of the primary functions of the Vendor Risk Management lifecycle, the core of which comprises vendor risk assessment processes.
Streamlining risk assessment workflows won’t only positively impact cyber risk remediation efficiency; it will significantly improve the efficacy of your entire VRM program. To highlight this potential, consider all of the aspects of a VRM program being influenced by vendor data from risk assessments.
- Due Diligence - Vendor risk assessments help businesses follow proper due diligence during vendor onboarding, ensuring inherent risks of prospective service providers sit inside corporate risk appetites.
- Risk Mitigation - Security risks detected by assessments are instantly fed into remediation processes to reduce data breach risks.
- Security Questionnaires - Nested within the risk assessment process, security questionnaires broaden the metrics influencing risk ratings, increasing the scope of vendor security vulnerability awareness.
- Fourth-Party Risk Exposure - Vendor assessments reveal the impact of fourth-party risks on your security posture.
- Third-Party Risk Management - TPRM broadens the risk mitigation scope of a Cyber Vendor Risk Management program to include security risks stemming from all types of third-party relationships, including supplier risks and supply chain risks. Third-party security risk scoring is also largely influenced by risk assessments.
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Because vendor risk assessment tasks make up such a large portion of a VRM program, if you can streamline its processes, you can significantly improve the efficiency of your overall VRM program.
Vendor risk assessment management is almost an entire cybersecurity strategy in itself. Multiple risk assessments tasks need to be tracked for each third-party vendor, including:
- Scheduling
- Completion tracking
- Regulatory compliance tracking - depends on the unique regulatory requirements of each vendor, such as GDPR or HIPAA.
Because there are so many risk assessment dimensions associated with each third-party vendor, organizations commonly resort to spreadsheets for tracking risk assessment efforts. The limitations of spreadsheets, however, quickly become apparent when vendor relationships scale. For small to medium businesses working with hundreds of third-party vendors, managing risk assessments with spreadsheets is a logistical nightmare.
Learn how UpGuard helped Schrödinger save 100+ hours by upgrading from spreadsheets >
If you’re currently running your risk assessment program with spreadsheets, the first step towards workflow automation should be to upgrade to a SaaS risk management tool with a risk assessment management module.
This risk management software foundation will open options for streamlining the entire risk assessment lifecycle by eradicating time-consuming manual processes.
OneTrust vs. UpGuard: Learn how they compare >
How UpGuard Can Help
UpGuard streamlines the entire risk assessment lifecycle by automating manual processes, commonly delaying risk assessment workflows. From tracking due diligence efforts for new vendors to scheduling questionnaires and managing additional security evidence collection, it can all be done in the UpGuard platform.
Watch the video below for an overview of UpGuard’s risk assessment workflow features.
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2. Cybersecurity Reporting
Previously stakeholders needed to be convinced of the importance of cybersecurity investments, but today, the criticality of cyber risk management processes is a leading business continuity concern amongst board members. Stakeholders now expect to be continuously informed of your risk management efforts - which is primarily evaluated by risk remediation efficacy/.
There are two repetitive processes within cyber reporting workflows that can benefit from automation.
- Reporting Design - The same basic reporting layout tends to be recycled in cybersecurity reports. This workflow would benefit from an editable template that automatically pulls relevant risk remediation data to avoid the arduous process of manually copying and pasting data into visualization software.
- Report scheduling - Stakeholders expect to be updated on a regular cadence. Rather than manually tracking reporting due dates and then manually updating reports in each reporting cycle, an ideal remediation tool should automate recurring reporting.
Learn how to write the executive summary of a cybersecurity report >
How UpGuard Can Help
UpGuard’s library of cybersecurity templates helps you choose a layout that best meets the reporting requirements of stakeholders. Each report automatically pulls the most updated data for a given reporting cycle, with insights reflecting the efficacy of your risk remediation efforts based on metrics such as:
- Security ratings - Real-time security posture measurements based on continuously monitoring your attack surfaces.
- Third-Party Risk Exposure - In-depth Insights into vendor risk distribution across attack vectors categories impacting Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and data protection efforts - invaluable intelligence for Third-Party Risk Management software.
- Vendor Risk Matrix - An overview of the distribution of vendor risks and their potential business impacts - helping board members understand the company’s exposure to third-party data breaches.
Each generated board summary can be instantly exported as editable PowerPoint slides to streamline board report presentation workflows.
Finally, with UpGuard’s recurring report feature, you can set a reporting schedule based on a regular cadence of either weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual reporting cycles. Each report is curated to your specified level of reporting detail and then automatically emailed to each stakeholder on their scheduled delivery dates.
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3. Vendor Risk Discovery
Vendor attack surfaces are vast, and much data is required to map them accurately. This area of Vendor Risk Management can significantly benefit from automation technology to increase the speed and breadth of attack vector data collection feeding each vendor’s risk profile.
Security ratings are very effective at mapping each vendor’s baseline security posture. Security ratings are unbiased security posture quantifications based on a passive assessment of the security configurations of an organization’s public digital assets. Security rating offer a user-friendly method of understanding each vendor’s degree of cyber threat resilience by representing their security posture as a score ranging from 0-950.
Learn how UpGuard calculates security ratings >
Security ratings streamline the due diligence process by offering an instant snapshot of a prospective vendor’s security posture - awareness that supports efficient time management by giving security teams the option of disregarding prospects that don’t exceed a given risk scoring baseline.
While security rating dashboards provide an excellent overview of the health of your third-party attack surface, they shouldn’t be your sole source of risk exposure data. For the most accurate vendor risk remediation insights, security ratings should be used alongside vendor risk assessments. The integration of these two mechanisms combines in-depth insights from risk assessment with real-time security posture tracking from security ratings to provide continuous attack surface awareness.
Security rating technology can also be leveraged to measure the impact of detected risks, making advanced remediation techniques such as risk prioritization possible. A Vendor Risk Management program that helps security teams understands which risks need to be prioritized has achieved a superior level of risk remediation efficiency - one that will have a significant positive impact on a company’s bottom line in the event of a data breach.
According to the 2023 Cost of a Data Breach report by IBM and the Ponemon Institute, faster cyber risk remediation could decrease data breach damage costs by USD 1.02 million.
“Breaches with identification and containment times under 200 days cost organizations USD 3.93 million. Those over 200 days cost USD 4.95 million—a difference of 23%.”
- 2023 Cost of a Data Breach Report
How UpGuard Can Help
UpGuard projects the likely impact of selected remediation tasks on an organization’s security posture to help security teams design the most efficient risk remediation plans.
With its custom notification capabilities, UpGuard allows security teams to design custom notification sequences to automate the process of bringing awareness to vendor risk remediation opportunities.
Watch the video below for a quick tour of the UpGuard platform.
