Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) platforms are widely adopted, but most CISOs do not believe they are effective at managing third-party cyber risk. According to the 2026 CISO Survey for Third-Party Cyber Risk Management Priorities, 61% of organizations already use a GRC platform, yet 66% of CISOs say these tools are only somewhat effective or not effective at all.
This gap highlights a growing mismatch between the tools organizations rely on and the risks they are expected to manage. GRC platforms play an important role in governance and compliance, but they were not designed to provide continuous, third-party–specific cyber risk oversight across complex supply chains.
As a result, many security teams are forced to rely on manual workarounds to compensate. Those workarounds increase workload, slow response times, and make it easier for critical vulnerabilities to go unnoticed.
Compliance Does Not Equal Security
GRC platforms and vendor questionnaires are deeply embedded in most organizations’ risk programs. They help track policies, document controls, and demonstrate compliance. The problem is that compliance, by itself, doesn’t actually prevent breaches.
That gap becomes clearer when you look at how modern third-party ecosystems actually operate. They’re not fixed or predictable, but constantly evolving systems where vendors depend on subcontractors, cloud providers, and shared infrastructure that sit far beyond direct visibility. This means that a specific assessment is capturing only a thin slice of a much larger reality.
Most traditional tools weren’t built for that level of complexity, especially when risk is distributed across layers that keep shifting. Relying on static questionnaires and point-in-time snapshots can feel complete in the moment but they become outdated almost immediately as the ecosystem changes.
Over time, that creates blind spots in places that were previously considered covered, and security teams end up reacting after issues have already formed rather than seeing them build.
So even when organizations meet every compliance requirement on paper, it doesn’t necessarily translate into real preparedness when something goes wrong, because resilience depends less on what was documented at a point in time and more on how well you can understand what’s changing right now underneath it all.
GRC Platforms Are Widely Used, But Not Purpose-Built
Panorays research shows that GRC adoption continues to grow. In addition to the 61% of organizations already using GRC platforms, another 34% plan to adopt one in 2026. Only a small minority are not considering GRC tools at all.
Despite this widespread use, traditional GRC platforms were not built to handle the complexity of third-party cyber risk. They were designed to manage broad governance workflows, internal controls, and compliance reporting. Third-party cyber risk, especially across deeper supply chain layers, introduces challenges those tools were never intended to solve.
This limitation is increasingly evident to security leaders. Only 34% of organizations say their GRC platform is very effective at accurately reflecting third-party cyber risk exposure. The remaining majority acknowledge that these tools struggle to identify, contextualize, and prioritize vendor-related threats.
Not only is this a minor shortcoming, but it points to a fundamental misalignment between the problem and the relevant tools.
Where GRC Platforms Fall Short
Third-party risk isn’t stagnant. It evolves as new vulnerabilities surface and dependencies shift in ways that often go unnoticed until much later. GRC platforms, on the other hand, tend to operate in slower cycles, relying on periodic updates, manual inputs, and structured workflows that struggle to keep pace with what’s actually changing in real time.
Because of that mismatch, security teams end up compensating. They pull data from multiple systems, export reports, reconcile spreadsheets, chase down questionnaire responses, and manually stitch everything together just to approximate a current view of exposure. It’s less about having a single source of truth and more about constantly reconstructing it.
Over time, the platform starts to function more like a storage layer than an active risk management system, holding information rather than reflecting what’s really happening across the ecosystem.
And that approach doesn’t scale well. As organizations grow into hundreds or even thousands of vendors across multiple tiers, each with their own shifting dependencies, the chances of something slipping through the cracks increase, especially when maintaining accuracy depends so heavily on manual effort and constant coordination.
Traditional Questionnaires Add Friction, Not Clarity
Vendor security questionnaires remain a common assessment method, but their limitations are widely acknowledged. Only 29% of organizations consider traditional questionnaires very effective at assessing third-party cyber risk. The remaining 71% say they fall short.
The issue is not that questionnaires are inherently flawed. It is that their structure no longer matches the complexity of today’s supply chains. Most questionnaires are static, lengthy, and manually completed. They are typically issued during onboarding, annual reviews, or after an incident.
A vendor that appeared compliant months ago may present a very different risk profile today. Questionnaires rarely capture real-time changes, emerging threats, or downstream dependencies that drive actual exposure.
Manual workflows also introduce inconsistency and delay. Responses vary in quality, validation is time-consuming, and follow-up is often incomplete. While questionnaires may satisfy certain compliance requirements, they do little to prevent incidents or surface risks early.
Why the Preparedness Gap Persists
Rising regulatory pressure has pushed organizations to invest in GRC platforms and compliance processes. Yet, as survey data shows, full preparedness remains elusive. Only 22% of CISOs say their organizations are fully prepared to meet third-party risk requirements such as DORA, NIS2, and GDPR.
This gap persists because many programs are built around compliance rather than operational risk management. Tools track what should exist, not what is actively changing. They document controls, but do not continuously test whether those controls remain effective across the supply chain.
In other words, organizations may look prepared on paper while remaining exposed in practice.
What Modern Third-Party Cyber Risk Management Requires
Managing third-party cyber risk today requires capabilities that extend beyond traditional GRC workflows. Organizations need:
- Continuous monitoring of vendor risk, not point-in-time snapshots
- Visibility across third-, fourth-, and nth-party relationships
- Automated risk intelligence that reflects real-world threat activity
- Context that connects vendor issues to business impact
Without these elements, risk management remains reactive. Security teams spend more time maintaining processes than reducing exposure.
How Panorays Complements and Extends GRC Platforms
Panorays provides continuous, third-party cyber risk visibility across the vendor ecosystem. By combining automated assessments, external risk intelligence, and ongoing monitoring, the platform gives security teams a real-time view of how vendor risk evolves.
This reduces reliance on manual workarounds and static questionnaires. Instead of chasing updates, teams receive timely insights into changes that matter. Risk is contextualized, prioritized, and tied to actionable decisions.
Final Thoughts: Moving Beyond Compliance-Centric Tools
GRC platforms play a critical role in governance and compliance, but they are not sufficient on their own to manage third-party cyber risk. As supply chains become more complex and threats evolve faster, tools built for documentation struggle to keep up.
The survey data is clear, that widespread adoption does not equal effectiveness. When 66% of CISOs say their GRC tools are not fully effective, it signals a need to rethink how third-party risk is managed.
True resilience requires moving beyond compliance checklists toward continuous visibility and adaptive security. Panorays helps organizations close that gap by providing the capabilities GRC platforms lack, enabling security teams to manage third-party cyber risk with confidence, clarity, and scale.
Check out the full survey here.
