While the cyber threat landscape continues to evolve, technologies like TPRM are making it easier than ever for security leaders and CISOs to have the security and peace of mind they require while working with third-party providers.
In today’s digital world, an increasing number of organizations are relying on third-party vendors to save time, scale, and outsource expertise in order to stay ahead of the competition. New security concerns associated with third-party vendors have become more common than ever before as a result of this transformation.
Third-party security risk has become a topic in boardrooms and SOCs alike, with supply-chain breaches like SolarWinds generating headlines and causing domino effects to enterprises involved. In fact, as per ‘The Proofpoint 2021 Voice of the CISO Report’ supply-chain attacks were named as one of the top worries by CISOs in the United States in 2021.
Organizations, governments, and the cybersecurity industry are all tackling this supply-chain dilemma head-on in order to clear up this blind spot. Organizations are establishing new standards for their third-party vendors – implementing more rigorous DevSecOps protocols to taking a “trust but verify” approach – to ensure better security posture from third-party vendors from beginning to end.
Also Read: Top Five Roadblocks Faced by CISOs When Handling Enterprise Security
Third-party Risk Management solutions
Businesses and IT leaders can leverage Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) solutions that can identify network, identity, geographical and technological threats. To safeguard themselves and those in their ecosystem, enterprises must have a good understanding of where the third-party risks are. Organizations can make better decisions about which third-party vendors to trust if they have a deeper understanding of the current marketplace.
External threat intelligence such as recent data leaks, misconfigured systems, hacked accounts, and infections can be accessed through third-party risk management solutions.
Exposure to the Dark Web
When assessing third-party risk, it’s critical to know if a company has been previously targeted by cyber criminals. Third-party risk management solutions can provide an inside look into the dark side of the web, revealing whether hackers have previously targeted the third-party vendor or whether such behaviour has been detected recently and should be taken into account.
Threats from the Dark Web are the most unpredictable since they are driven by specific actors and groups using unknown TTPs, making it difficult for CISOs and threat intelligence teams to respond without sufficient visibility and context.
Security and network hygiene
Many of the recent supply-chain attacks that made headlines were the consequence of companies’ lack of knowledge about their third-party vendor’s network and security hygiene. Businesses can use TPRM to perform more unique quality checks related to network hygiene of the company, such as analysis of exposed identities on the Dark Web, infected endpoints, breached accounts, and historical indicators of compromise, to complete a comprehensive digital risk assessment of the third-party vendor.
Also Read: Addressing the Growing Challenge of Insider Risk is Critical for Workforce Agility
Identity health check
Identity health checks for third-party vendors with access to a company’s networks and data, similar to how firms do background checks on potential employees, can go a long way. By enumerating third-party user identities, TPRM can build an early understanding of how trustworthy a business is, the extent of their footprint, or if the users have been hacked — critical information that can alert CISOs to stop communicating with them via e-mail.
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