Today’s businesses depend on other companies, including cloud providers, software vendors, consultants, payment processors, and outsourced service providers. These third-party relationships can contribute to productivity and innovation. However, they also expose organizations to significant cybersecurity risk when an organization’s vendor experiences a security incident.
Third-party risk occurs when a vendor has access to an organization’s systems, data, or network. If the vendor does not maintain good cybersecurity practices, bad actors may use the vendor’s relationship with the organization to gain access to the organization’s systems. Many threat actors purposely target smaller vendors because they are often less defended than the large organizations they support.
One example of third-party risk can arise through shared access. Vendors may require remote access to provide services or may need to take the role of a privileged user via integration with an organization’s applications. If these access methods are not periodically (and consistently) managed and monitored, they can be an entry point for an attacker. Compromised vendor accounts have provided attackers with gateways to laterally exploit corporate networks during numerous high-profile breaches.
Visibility into the security practices of third-party vendors can be a major hurdle for organizations. Companies will often have strong security controls internally, but are still reliant on their third-parties, who have unknown policies, patch management, monitoring capabilities, and incident response procedures. Without an appropriate assessment, organizations will have no way to determine what level of risk each vendor presents to their organization.
Additionally, the amount of data shared with third parties increases their exposure to risk. A common example would be the vendor’s storage of sensitive data, such as customer records, financial information, proprietary information, or operational systems. When a vendor is breached, their data can become exposed even if the organization has strong internal controls. Therefore, third-party security must be a shared responsibility among all parties.
In order to manage these risks, organizations should establish a structured third-party risk management program. The first step to do this is to identify all vendors that interact with either business systems or sensitive information. After identifying the vendors, they should then be categorized by the type of risks they pose. Generally, vendors classified as high risk require more in-depth security assessments as well as ongoing monitoring.
It is important for businesses to perform security assessments in order to determine if their vendors are following established cybersecurity frameworks and best practices. These security assessments often include an examination of many areas, including: access management, vulnerability management, incident response, encryption, and data protection. Contracts between businesses and their vendors should also clearly outline both parties' respective expectations in terms of security requirements, compliance requirements, and breach notifications requirements.
Another critical aspect of third party risk management is continuous monitoring of vendors. Cybersecurity threats are not static, and vendor security postures may change over time. As such, organizations should continually monitor their vendor's performance, perform periodic security assessments of each vendor, and evaluate and monitor potential cyber threats associated with their third party ecosystem.
Successful third party risk management provides organizations with a higher level of cyber resilience. Organizations that focus solely on protecting their internal infrastructure have a limited view of their overall security posture and potential risks to their business operations. By expanding their overall security strategy to include the entire third party ecosystem that supports their operations, organizations are less likely to have hidden vulnerabilities within that infrastructure and can be sure that they will not become an unintentional pathway for cyber threats through their business partners.
Finally, due to the highly interconnected nature of the digital world in which we live today, organizations are now realizing that they are no longer able to rely solely on their own organizational boundaries for protection against cybersecurity threats. The degree to which an organization's partners or suppliers have an adequate cyber security posture and are following the same or comparable cybersecurity frameworks (and implementing the same security controls) will affect the organization as a whole. Organizations that proactively manage their third party risk will be better prepared to avert security breaches, to protect confidential information, and to maintain the trust of customers and stakeholders.
Ancrew Global Services provides advanced cybersecurity solutions, including vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, and privilege escalation detection strategies to help organizations identify weaknesses and secure their environments against evolving threats.