A Risk-Based Approach to Cybersecurity Monitoring

While you may already be aware of the potential risks imposed on your organization through a failure at your third-party vendor, what are you doing to identify those risks and take actionable measures to protect yourself in real time?

Many organizations only perform due diligence before contracting and fail to implement ongoing monitoring of their vendors. In this case, a lack of information of your vendor’s security position allows your organization to be exposed to a range of risks including, a damaged reputation, loss of resources and revenue.

Why You Need Cybersecurity Monitoring

Cybercrime is more prevalent today, than ever before. According to a study by the University of Maryland, there’s a hacker attack every 39 seconds, affecting one in three Americans. Not to mention the costs associated with cybersecurity. Juniper Research suggests the average cost of a data breach in 2020 will exceed $150 million and will cost businesses over $2 trillion total in 2019.

A software is be the best solution to help you identify, monitor, mitigate and report on the possibilities or likelihood of cyberattacks, while also increasing your awareness of the risks associated with them. It’s essential to not only monitor your own cyber risks, but also to monitor the cyber posture of your high-risk technology vendors.  Most of us perform a security review of a high-risk technology vendor when we onboard them as a new vendor. But are you continuing to monitor your vendor periodically throughout the year for potential new cyber risks?

Areas to Look For

It’s essential to have a clear picture of your vendor’s cyber posture. According to Nexusguard’s Threat Report, large-scale DDoS attacks increase in size by 500% year over year. It’s more important now than ever to make sure you know what to look for and how to prevent these attacks. It’s crucial to prioritize your list of vendors and develop a periodic cybersecurity review to identify potential risks quickly before an attacker has time to exploit the vulnerability.

There are 11 key components to review when you assess a vendor’s cyber posture. Be sure to identify, monitor, and mitigate these foundational areas of cybersecurity risk:

• Patch Management
• Email Security
• DNS Health
• Leaded Credentials
• IP/Domain Reputation
• Fraudulent Domains
• Attack Surface
• Digital Footprint
• Web Ranking
• Information Disclosure
• Brand Monitoring

How VendorInsight® Can Help

VendorInsight® helps you take control of your vendor’s risk environment and prioritize high risk and critical vendors. According to research by IBM, 95% of all security incidents involved human error. This is good news since VendorInsight® automates your process without relying on subjective assessments reducing opportunity for personal errors.

This can be done through VendorInsight’s Vendor Relationship Profile (VRP) which contains a criticality assessment that measures inherent risk based on an objective questionnaire. The VRP will identify the vendors that expose you to cyber risk and prescribe cybersecurity monitoring to help you identify, monitor, and mitigate cyber risks with that unique vendor. 

Every vendor is different, and as a result it’s important that your oversight be customized to that specific vendor. This can take up a lot of time and resources that frankly, could be used for other business imperatives, like growing the business. VendorInsight® eliminates the guesswork and ensures the due diligence you perform, including cybersecurity reviews, is directly linked to mitigate an inherent risk with the vendor. Additionally, you’ll gain insight and report findings back to the board of directors or business executives for quick and efficient decision making.

Learn More

VendorInsight® promises to help protect you against increasing cyberattacks and breaches. You’ll be able to show regulators you understand which vendors expose you to cyber risk and the steps you’ve taken to mitigate the risk. Cybersecurity monitoring is costly, therefore it is important to focus your resources efficiently by monitoring vendors that have high inherent cyber risk. Cybersecurity threats continue to grow but if you follow the steps we defined above you’ll protect yourself from potential fines, lawsuits and revenue loss. Request a demo today to learn more about how VendorInsight® protects your organization from cyber risks.