Cybersecurity is a critical concern for organizations of all sizes. Implementing robust security measures is a best practice and essential to protect against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. However, the challenge is often more significant for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) due to limited resources, lack of security expertise, and other common obstacles.

Ongoing monitoring is a key step in effective Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) that helps ensure continuous compliance, cybersecurity performance, and risk management of external vendors and service providers. It’s a necessary step that reinforces how vendors are managing their cybersecurity processes to prevent potential data breaches or reputational damage.

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) is a government agency responsible for providing foreign signals intelligence and ensuring information security for Australia’s national interests. The ASD also significantly enhances the nation’s cybersecurity through strategic advice, standards, and protective measures.

In an age of increasingly complex cyber threats, New Zealand has implemented robust cybersecurity standards to secure the online environment for individuals, businesses, and government entities. New Zealand's cybersecurity approach is unique and effective, from the overarching strategies laid out by national cybersecurity policies to specific regulatory requirements that impact sectors like healthcare and finance.

In today’s interconnected business landscape, outsourcing to third-party vendors and service providers is an effective method for most organizations to improve operational efficiency and lower financial costs. However, as businesses form third-party partnerships, they inherit potential risks and increase the complexity of their third-party ecosystem, as any one vendor can become an attack vector that cybercriminals exploit to pursue a data breach.

The vendor risk management lifecycle (VRM lifecycle) is an end-to-end system that categorizes critical VRM or third-party risk management processes into three phases: vendor onboarding, ongoing risk management, and continuous monitoring.

Onboarding is perhaps the most precarious phase of the Vendor Risk Management process. A single oversight could expose your organization to dangerous third-party security risks, increasing your chances of suffering a data breach. This post explains how to bolster the most vulnerable access points of the vendor onboarding process to help you securely scale your VRM program.

Vendor Risk Management encompasses a wide range of cybersecurity risk factors. As such, a VRM report design could range from highly detailed to concise, depending on the specific reporting requirements of stakeholders and the board. This list represents the most comprehensive scope of third-party risk management information to fit the broadest range of VRM reporting use cases.

The second UpGuard Summit of 2024 kicked off at the end of May, welcoming security professionals from APAC, EMEA, India, and the U.S. to discuss key developments and strategies across the cybersecurity industry. This quarter’s event focused on third-party risk management (TPRM), specifically how security teams can use automation to eliminate manual work and streamline critical TPRM workflows and processes.

Vendor risk scoring is a critical component within vendor risk management (VRM) or third-party risk management (TPRM) programs and an organization’s overall risk management strategy. Risk scoring is an integral tool in the risk assessment process, helping organizations identify, evaluate, and mitigate potential risks associated with third-party vendors or service providers.