BlueVoyant #1: Operationalizing Third-Party Cyber Risk Management

When it comes to keeping up with an organization’s critical threats, it’s important to have visibility into your third parties. Traditionally, organizations have relied on risk ratings to keep track of the security posture across their shared third-party network, and identify where they may be most vulnerable. Useful as they are, however, risk ratings have their limitations. Users have difficulty deploying and wrapping an efficient process around them. Just trying to keep up with vendors and services in-house is time and resource intensive. So how do you effectively “get good” at risk scores and extract the real value behind them for your business? Enter the Risk Operations Center (ROC). Similar to the model that’s long been used by security teams via Security Operations Centers, a ROC is staffed with cyber security experts who continuously monitor and curate alerts to evaluate potential risks to your third-party ecosystems. Unfortunately, ROCs are difficult to create and maintain, which is why enterprise solutions have been created to lower the barrier to entry for organizations that want to leverage these benefits. In Part one of this series, we'll explore how a Risk Operation Center effectively operationalizes security rating by: ● Creating and utilizing ratings for continuous monitoring ● Validating ratings with expert oversight ● Modifying ratings based on an organization's tailored risk appetite ● Refining ratings with automated tools and techniques to scale approach