By Katherine Desy

According to the 2022 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, there has been a 13% increase in ransomware breaches – more than half in the last 5 years. As company technology continues to transition to cloud-based applications, increased efficiency and lower costs are to be expected, but the need for more stringent security practices prevail.

The complexity of modern cybersecurity programs makes it difficult to keep up with today’s changing threat landscape. Smaller organizations, in particular, may use a small, in-house security team and simply wait for something to go wrong. Working with a Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) allows organizations to outsource security and focus more on preventative measures. Most MSSPs offer a suite of products and services, but one of the most crucial is third-party risk intelligence.

To put it simply, without a view of third-party risk, your customers are flying blind. Here are a few reasons why you must include third-party risk intelligence in your portfolio of services offerings:

To provide a more comprehensive view of cyber risk

An organization’s internal cyber posture is critical, but outside of those four walls, there’s much more to the story. Whether your customer is looking to vet new vendors or automate their compliance questionnaire process, utilizing a cyber risk intelligence platform allows you to continuously monitor all of your customers’ vendors in one place, or at the very least, their most critical vendors.

A security ratings service vendor will offer your customers a view of third-party security controls in areas such as:

Patch Management

  • Are vendors up-to-date with the latest software patches?
  • Which software applications are they using?

Credential Management

  • Do they have any leaked credentials available on the deep or dark web?

SSL/TLS Strength

  • Do they have any invalid or expired SSL certificates?

Application and Website Security

  • What do their encryption processes look like?
  • Do they use bot detection measures?
  • Do they have any critical code mistakes?

These findings are powerful tools to help your customer support their vendor to remediate known vulnerabilities. With these recommendations, you become an invaluable part of your customers’ cyber risk infrastructure.

To quantify third-party risk and help customers identify risk appetite and tolerance

Risk Appetite

The level of strategic risk an organization is willing to accept during normal business operations.

Risk Tolerance

The degree of variance from risk appetite that an organization will accept around specific objectives.

Many organizations have a difficult time measuring third-party risk in these terms, creating frustration for practitioners trying to understand and relay critical information to internal and external stakeholders. Some still rely on risk questionnaires and generic scoring models that produce highly-technical findings, which are difficult to action.

Cyber risk quantification gives security leaders the means to map risks to actual financial figures, which is often impossible to get right with other quantification methods. Using this information, you can help customers weigh the pros and cons of security investments and help them maximize ROI.

To ensure compliance across multiple cybersecurity frameworks

Do your customers know if their vendors are compliant to PCI, ISO, CSF, GDPR, or HIPAA standards? What about customers that work with the federal government – Are their vendors CMMC compliant or in the self-certification process?

Compliance questionnaires for third-parties are crucial, but they are not the only solution to managing compliance. Consider automating your customers’ process by using a document parser that consumes a wide variety of questionnaires and internal policy documents and maps line items to well-known standards and frameworks.

Join our global fleet of partners

Black Kite understands the value that MSSPs bring to today’s managed cybersecurity programs. More and more companies are relying on MSSP support to bring third party risk management to the forefront in an affordable and cutting-edge way.

With a growing MSSP offering, the Black Kite Aviator partner program gives you access to an award-winning platform, built from a hackers’ perspective, that offers standards-based third party cyber risk intelligence from three critical dimensions: Technical, financial and compliance.

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