Developing a World Class Third Party Vendor Risk Management Program

Hackers are now using third parties as an entry point to access an outsourcer’s sensitive data, increasing regulatory scrutiny and reputational risk; therefore, the spotlight is on third party risk management. Risks to sensitive data have never been greater. With the rise in cyber-attacks and data breaches, outsourcing to third parties can present an exponential threat to corporations.

 

New regulations, technologies, standards, and security threats require organizations to implement robust vendor oversight to meet and stay ahead of the latest risks and challenges from new payment methods and systems, data breaches, and cyber-attacks. However, the service provider control evaluation process has long been inefficient and costly. Each outsourcing organization produces and distributes its own proprietary questionnaire to each of its service providers. Service providers strain their resources to respond to diverse client information requests. Inconsistencies from questionnaire-to-questionnaire cause delays for all parties. Time and resource intensive onsite visits further burden both the outsourcer and the service provider.