As organizations grow, they rely on vendors and suppliers to run efficiently. Subcontractors and third parties often provide expert services when an enterprise has no intent to develop that expertise internally.
However, the risk of breaches and operational outages due to reliance on vendors may eliminate that cost-effectiveness without proper vendor risk management practices in place.
Benefits Of Vendor Risk Management
Because you can’t live without vendors and suppliers when growing your business, the information security team should build vendor risk management into their daily operations
Accountability: As you hold your vendor accountable with regular audits and assessments, they’ll pass that accountability along to their vendors. This process creates a safer cybersecurity environment for all parties.
Limiting Reputation and Financial Risk: Reputational risk is the top concern during a data breach. When an organization exposes user data, they lose the customer’s trust and any future business with that client. Many times, the breach will impact the stock price, but it rebounds significantly faster than the organization’s reputation.
Maintain Efficiencies: When a data breach results in an operational outage, the team loses hours or days of work trying to repair the mistake or revert to back-ups of work. Without proper vendor management in place, those backups may not be available.
