Third-party vendor risk management: How to assess and monitor your supply chain security

Most businesses don’t just rely on internal systems. They run on cloud platforms, payroll providers, marketing tools, IT partners, and dozens of SaaS accounts that keep daily work moving. Each vendor solves a problem, and each one also creates a new relationship of trust. Vendor risk management (VRM) is the process of assessing, approving, monitoring, and reviewing the security risks that come from working with third parties. It helps businesses understand which vendors can access sensitive systems or data, which controls those vendors have in place, whether their security practices are sound enough to justify that access, and how quickly access can be changed if a contract ends or an incident happens. We’ll explain how to approach vendor risk management within your own business: how to assess the vendors you already work with, how to classify third party vendor risk, what to include in a vendor security checklist, and how to control vendor credentials before they become long-term exposure. Vendor risk management is powered by a simple principle: every external party that touches your data, systems, or business processes changes your risk profile. Most vendor risk is created by everyday work. For example, a third-party agency may be brought into…