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What is vendor risk management and why is it important?
Vendor risk management is the process of identifying, evaluating, and mitigating risks associated with the use of third-party vendors or service providers. It is an important part of overall risk management because organizations often rely on a variety of vendors to perform critical functions, and the failure or breach of a vendor's systems can have significant consequences for the organization.
For example, if a vendor that provides cloud-based storage experiences a data breach, the organization that uses its services could lose sensitive data and face legal and financial repercussions. Similarly, if a vendor that provides a critical service experiences an outage, the organization may not be able to perform its own business functions, leading to financial losses and damage to its reputation.
Effective vendor risk management involves assessing the potential risks associated with each vendor, implementing controls to mitigate those risks, and monitoring the vendor's performance to ensure that they are meeting their obligations and maintaining the required level of security and reliability.
It is important to regularly review and assess vendor risk to ensure that the organization is taking a proactive approach to managing potential threats.
How does 6clicks help with vendor risk management?
The 6clicks platform helps your vendor risk management (VRM) program by helping with the below steps.
Creating important content for VRM
Vendor risk management needs various documents such as assessment templates, questionnaires, policy documents, etc. On the 6clicks platform, you can use our pre-designed vendor risk policy and assessment template or customize your own documents and upload them.
The 6clicks content library includes a range of resources such as audit and assessment templates, policies, control sets, risk and issue libraries, incident playbooks, and project plans. You can choose to use these resources as-is or tailor them to fit the specific needs of your organization.
Import and manage multiple vendors
Even when you deal with multiple vendors, you can import the complete vendor list and manage all your vendors in one place. Import and organize your vendors in bulk, customize fields to fit your specific needs, and classify them based on your own framework.
This way, you can reduce the risk in your supply chain through vendor risk assessments, vendor profiling, and the management of vendor-related issues all on one platform.
Automate vendor risk assessments
Streamline your vendor risk assessment processes by automating them using either questionnaires or requirements-based assessments. This will allow you to manage the entire VRM lifecycle efficiently. You can automate audits and assessments for multiple vendors.
Identify, manage, and treat risks
Our platform assists you in identifying your risks, categorizing them in risk registers, and conducting risk assessments. It also highlights the potential causes and impacts of these risks, provides risk treatment plans and helps you manage the entire treatment process.
So, you can identify and categorize vendor-related risks identified during assessments in risk registers, and then manage, remediate, and report on these risks using 6clicks.
Work with multiple standards and frameworks
There are multiple standards and frameworks that are used to manage vendor risk. While managing multiple frameworks and ensuring compliance can be a very complex task, AI makes it quick and easy. Use Hailey, the 6clicks AI engine to identify overlaps with different standards and frameworks and automate the analysis and mapping between various standards, such as NIST 800-37, ISO 27001, and ISO 27036.
Final thoughts
Even as of 2022, companies are still relying on manual processes for vendor risk management with as many as 45% of surveyed organizations still using spreadsheets. This process is not only inaccurate and time-consuming, but it can also be disastrous considering the risk it exposes your organization to, in case of a third-party breach. Using an automation-powered platform like 6clicks significantly improves your vendor risk management program. For more information, see our solution for Vendor Risk Management.
Get a demo of the 6clicks platform and get started with us to streamline vendor risk management and all other activities related to information security and GRC.
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Written by Andrew Robinson
Andrew started his career in the startup world and went on to perform in cyber and information security advisory roles for the Australian Federal Government and several Victorian Government entities. Andrew has a Masters in Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism (PICT) specialising in Cyber Security and holds IRAP, ISO 27001 LA, CISSP, CISM and SCF certifications.
