Third parties are a critical part of every organization’s extended enterprise and play a highly important role in delivering your core products and services. That’s why it is vital to ensure that not only your organization has proper cybersecurity measures in place but that your third parties do as well so that you can continue to drive sustainable growth, no matter what.
But did you know that 54% of breaches in the last 12 months were actually caused by third-party vendors? This is important to note because as organizations continue to grow, they rely more on third-party vendors to deliver their critical services, support applications, and optimize processes. And while these partnerships can provide organizations with competitive advantages, they can also expose them to an increased level of cybersecurity risk. The reason for this is that third parties often need to have access to sensitive data and critical organizational systems. Due to this level of access, “bad actors” are increasingly targeting third-party vendors as potential entry points for attacks, making it essential that organizations understand the cybersecurity posture of all of the third-party vendors that they employ.
In today’s world, the resiliency of an organization isn’t solely determined by its own practices but rather by the collective of all the partners, vendors, and suppliers that the organization leverages. And the reality is that a single weak link within an organization can compromise its entire cybersecurity integrity. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2025, 60% of organizations will use cybersecurity risk as a primary determinant in the selection of third-party vendors for transactions and business engagements.
To address the importance of cybersecurity risk, we are excited to share that Fusion has partnered with SecurityScorecard, a leader in the cybersecurity industry, to provide you with continuous monitoring of your third parties’ cybersecurity postures. Through this partnership, we will also provide you with a seamless integration which will allow core SecurityScorecard data to be incorporated into Fusion. This will enable your organization to:
- Continuously monitor critical vendors – By incorporating SecurityScorecard data into Fusion, you get a holistic view of your vendors’ risk posture and can continuously monitor for any potential risks or incidents that may occur.
- Identify impacts that vendors have on critical services – Analyze the upstream and downstream impacts that your vendors have on your most critical services and operational dependencies to proactively mitigate risks.
- Proactively take action as soon as risks are identified – Through automation and alerts, you can engage individuals or specific teams to begin research when a third-party vendor hits specific risk thresholds.
- Have a holistic view of vendor and services risks – Gain access to customizable dashboards that show your overall vendor portfolio risk and services impacts and then leverage them for executive reporting.
A Better Way to Manage Cybersecurity Risk
In the recent past, the assessment of vendor cybersecurity risk postures was typically only done once, either at the start of a relationship with a third party or, at most, on an annual basis. This infrequent assessment of vendor cybersecurity risk has historically been due to the extensive questionnaires that needed to be completed manually. SecurityScorecard has developed a process for understanding and managing these risks that meets the needs of organizations in today’s increasingly digitized world.
SecurityScorecard also collects millions of data points from the internet to assess the cybersecurity risk of third-party vendors. This data is then used to create informative cybersecurity ratings that professionals can use to make confident decisions about the third parties that they have partnerships with.
Embracing this proactive approach of monitoring is not just a best practice – it’s an essential strategy for preserving business continuity and resilience. To learn more about our SecurityScorecard connector, please reach out to your Fusion Account Manager for a demo.
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