In our recent survey on The State of Third-Party Security Risk Management we were very surprised to see that most companies are still making the same mistake that they were last year, the year before that, and, it seems, forever.
They are still using manual questionnaires and processes for their vendor security assessments, acceptance and onboarding practices.
So, we asked ourselves, why would that be?
It could be inertia; they are just doing what they have done before. It could be a lack of awareness of the automated third-party security risk management (TPSRM) solutions available. It could be one of those tasks that just fly under the radar.
None of those answers seemed very satisfying so here are 4 reasons why you should move to an automated solution, like ours, now.
- Automation is well established in IT more broadly, think ITSM and ITAM, as well as in infosec. There is no reason not to apply the tools available to get the lift that automation provides.
- Third-party security risk is dynamic, ever-changing, and rapidly expanding. The likelihood of a third-party breach is 6X to 8X that of a direct attack. Companies are constantly adding vendors and suppliers and those suppliers have constantly changing security postures. Automation is a requirement for staying on top of this risk landscape.
- Automation is a proven driver of productivity and ROI. Even in, and especially in, tough economic times, investments in automation are strongly considered and often approved.
In the case of TPSRM and automation, the time saved in evaluating external attack surfaces, streamlining questionnaire development, efficiencies in managing the questionnaire completion process with suppliers, digesting supplier assessment responses and developing remediation plans, is indisputable. Once onboarded, continuous monitoring of security postures, compliance postures and overall ratings, combined with automated alerts triggered by significant security changes, enables management by exception aligned to and driven by standards and requirements. - Automation will also reduce the amount of time spent on tedious work like maintaining excel spreadsheets and manual reviews of questionnaire responses which will improve morale and free them up for other important security or IT initiatives. In a labor market where infosec workers are at a premium, team member retention is truly important.
It’s time. It’s time to automate your TPSRM practice. Panorays automates, accelerates and scales your third-party security evaluation and management process so you can quickly and easily manage, mitigate and remediate risk, reduce breaches, ensure vendor compliance and improve your security across the board.
To learn more, download our CISO’s Guide to Rapid Vendor Due Diligence and click here to download The State of Third-Party Security Risk Management report.
