Now more than ever, the specter of cyber threats looms large over organizations of all sizes and sectors. The consequences of a data breach stemming from just one vulnerability can be catastrophic, ranging from financial losses to irreparable reputational damage. As businesses strive to reinforce their defenses against these evolving threats, the need for a reliable and predictive cybersecurity risk assessment tool has never been greater.

SecurityScorecard STRIKE threat researchers discovered 12 zero-days in customer environments in the last year. Attacks are increasingly targeting third-party software. The zero-day vulnerability that emerged in Progress Software’s MOVEit Transfer product last year was a stark reminder of the real-world impact of such vulnerabilities. It wreaked havoc on businesses and governments worldwide, with cyber criminals exploiting it since May of 2023.

‍ Over the past few decades, cyber attackers have increasingly wreaked havoc on the market, taking advantage of newer, more sophisticated ways to exploit system vulnerabilities. However, in fear of losing competitive advantages, organizations had notoriously downplayed the impact of these attacks, misleading investors and resulting in stock prices that did not accurately represent the risk landscape. ‍

The deadline for achieving complaince with the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) will be here before you know it, with enforcement beginning in January 2025. With Third-Party Risk Management being the central focus of the EU regulation, it’s imperative to cater your TPRM program to the DORA regulation to achieve sustainable compliance. In this post, we outline the DORA requirements related to third-party risk management and explain how to comply with them.

Digital transformation initiatives and the adoption of cloud, mobile, and remote work models have eviscerated the traditional security perimeter. Enterprise assets are distributed across the cloud, endpoints, mobile, and personally owned devices and expanded the attack surface in the process. Organizations are increasingly vulnerable to attack via unknown and unmanaged Internet-facing assets.

Enterprise organizations face big challenges in managing software application risk at scale. With hundreds of developers working on thousands of applications across numerous business units, the complexity of ensuring security throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC) is staggering.

Organizational risk management often mentions third-party risk management (TPRM) and vendor risk management (VRM). The cybersecurity industry commonly uses these terms interchangeably, but there is a distinct difference between these two crucial components of an organization's broader risk management strategy.

Vendor due diligence questionnaires are a type of security questionnaire for third-party vendors or service providers that are an essential part of any third-party risk management program (TPRM) program. By using a vendor due diligence questionnaire, security teams can evaluate a new vendor’s overall risk hygiene before entering into a business partnership.

Over the last few years, the education industry has increased its dependency on third-party service providers, expanding the average attack surface and escalating the importance of comprehensive risk awareness. Higher education institutions that rely on large vendor ecosystems must develop robust cultures of risk awareness to safeguard their data and daily operations from cyber attacks, data breaches, and other disruptions.

In today’s interconnected digital world, safeguarding sensitive data and preventing unauthorized access is vital, especially for U.S. government agencies, contractors, and other information-sharing partners that compete for Department of Defense (DoD) contracts. While many organizations that work alongside the U.S.