Heading Off Disruption: How to Implement Truly Proactive TPRM

Written by: Bob Maley, Chief Security Officer

Reactivity isn’t the best option in most areas of life. You don’t want to buy a first aid kit while you’re actively wounded or hike to the nearest exit to fill up a gas can because your car ran out of fuel on the highway. In the same way, reacting to third-party risk as it’s happening (e.g., one of your vendors facing a zero-day threat or an auditor flagging one of your business-critical vendors as noncompliant) is responding too late. And your risk posture, reputation, and (let’s be honest) sanity will likely suffer as a result. 

Instead, protecting your business against increased third-party breaches and responding to a rapidly expanding vendor ecosystem requires a more proactive, planned approach. It takes new strategies that traditional TPRM solutions often don’t consider—monitoring your third-party risks in real-time and identifying weak points before anything significant ever happens. It’s like watching your gas gauge and filling up your car long before you hit empty or preparing for unforeseen injuries by keeping a first aid kit on hand. 

Let’s dive into a few differences between a traditional, reactive approach to TPRM and a proactive cyber security strategy powered by Black Kite that keeps you one step ahead.

From Point-in-Time Snapshots to Continuous Monitoring

Traditional TPRM tends to lean on point-in-time snapshots about a company’s third-party risk posture. However, this approach misses many rapidly shifting factors in vendor relationships. A vendor that seemed secure might suddenly make changes that increase their level of risk. Or a new zero-day vulnerability might emerge that affects some of your third-party resources.

How Black Kite Solves It

To keep a close eye on these constant changes, Black Kite offers continuous monitoring, with the ability to narrow down findings to the risks that matter most to your organization. We don’t inundate you with data; instead, we prioritize and bring attention to the alerts that matter most in a sea of vendors, applications and data points. By watching vendors’ security posture over an extended period, your team collects better context than a static score or rating could ever provide. 

From Inaccurate Scoring to Precise Data

When your team considers quantifying risk, established systems like security rating services (SRS) scores might come to mind. However, these scoring systems leave out many important nuances, such as how a vendor is mitigating an emerging threat. SRS scores can also be vague, as two security service organizations will often provide two different letter ratings for the same business. Sometimes, it seems like the score came out of a black box, with no way of knowing how the security service decided on that particular rating. 

How Black Kite Solves It

Instead of relying on ambiguous scoring systems, Black Kite uses technical cybersecurity ratings using commonly-used frameworks developed by the MITRE Corporation. We conduct non-intrusive scans and rank each vendor in 20 categories, such as patch management, attack surface, and network security. The total score is a weighted average of these individual categories. It is then translated into a letter-grade system for quantifying risk at a glance.

Black Kite also shows how each vendor ranks in the following categories:

• Potential financial impact by monetary amount, calculated with the Open FAIR™ model
• Correlation with industry-accepted compliance frameworks 
• Ransomware susceptibility, as shown by the Ransomware Susceptibility Index^®

With this precise data, your team can take proactive cyber security to the next level by accurately identifying which vendors pose the most significant threats and make informed risk decisions.

From Vague Findings to Actionable Insights

Commonly used rating systems also fail to provide actionable information. If the only information you have about a business-critical vendor’s risk posture is that they scored a “D” in their SRS rating, your team might not know what to do next. Do you tell the vendor and invite further confusion because neither party knows what caused the low score? Do you ignore it and hope for the best? Or do you raise the alarm in your organization and cause a domino effect of business complications?

How Black Kite Solves It

Black Kite prioritizes transparency and accuracy in vendor risk management, offering deep, actionable insights into each vendor’s risk posture, including their susceptibility to ransomware attacks. With this detailed data, you can better reach out to stakeholders within the business or to the vendors directly and have productive conversations about risk management. By fostering more collaborative relationships and removing uncertainty, you increase the likelihood that a vendor will take positive action to improve their risk posture. 

In the case of significant threats, such as data breaches or ransomware attacks, we also leverage FocusTags™, ensuring that your team immediately sees when a high-risk incident occurs in your vendor ecosystem. We filter out the noise and confusion, so your team can focus on the next steps that will most significantly mitigate your third-party risk. 

Sign Up for a Vendor Risk Assessment Today

A proactive approach to third-party risk management can make all the difference for your security team. Proactive cyber security contributes to a better relationship between you and your vendors, less noise and confusion for your team, and more concrete, actionable next steps. Rather than waiting to see what happens or chasing false alarms, your team can take control of vendor risk and prioritize protecting your most valuable assets. 

Want to see Black Kite in action? Sign up for our free risk assessment to see how your vendor ecosystem stacks up.