How Automation Helps Your Supplier Cyber Risk Management Process

It’s not hard to see that there is a shortage of cybersecurity specialists. Combine that with remote and hybrid work, and you will see an increase in security breaches. You have a lot of overburdened, stressed professionals who are looking for ways to make their job easier. Do you feel like this?

If you find this appealing, automating your third-party security program will enhance your professional life and strengthen your organization’s security posture.

There are many critical steps to managing third parties. These steps can be automated to speed up the process. These are five ways automation can make an impact:

What automation can help with your supplier cyber risk management process

1. Assessing your vendors

You could be exposed to possible breaches, fines, lawsuits, loss of reputation, and customer distrust if you don’t have a clear view of supplier risk.

To have a complete, detailed view of and control your third-party security risks, you need to combine automated, dynamic security questionnaires and an external attack surface assessment. You also need to consider the business impact on your company.

Don’t waste time searching for vendors, filling out forms, and tracking down answers (or lack thereof). Manual questionnaires are slow and laborious. They also make it difficult to scale.

The automated assessment gives you a quick and accurate picture of fourth-party and supplier cyber risk. You also have the assurance that vendors are in compliance with your company’s security policies, regulations, and risk appetite.

Also read: 6 Ways for Establishing a Vendor Risk Management Program

2. Engage with your vendors

It is essential that business engagement be seamless. It is essential that you can easily communicate with vendors and resolve issues as they arise. Multiplying phone calls, hundreds of emails, and writing down notes is a poor and inefficient way to manage cyber risk for your suppliers.

In-platform communication with vendors reduces communication barriers and fosters better collaboration. It makes it easier for you to keep track of your suppliers’ progress, meet deadlines, and resolve issues faster. It also serves as a record of all communications, which can be referred to later for clarifications or auditing purposes.

3. Remediating cyber gaps

How can you keep track of the remediation plans and findings for different suppliers when there are hundreds, thousands, or even millions of them? How can you make sure that your suppliers are closing their cyber gaps quickly?

You can improve the security of your suppliers according to your risk appetite by creating customized remediation plans. These plans are based on identified cyber vulnerabilities. They include clear instructions to close them and a time frame that you decide. The changes made by your suppliers are automatically detected and reflected as they progress with their remediation plans.

It takes just a few clicks to quickly close vendor investigations in an efficient and organized manner. It’s easy to ask and answer questions of your vendor during the remediation process with in-platform communications.

Also read: Enterprise Risk Management: A Complete Guide

4. Approving (or rejecting) vendors

Vendors are hired because they can help your business succeed. It is important to approve vendors quickly so that you can work with them as soon as possible.

Automated approvals will quickly be granted to suppliers who conform with your security policy so that you can reap the benefits immediately. You have all the reasons why a vendor was denied approval. You can either allow the vendor to rectify those deficiencies or reject them outright.

5. Continuous Monitoring

While manual cyber risk assessments give you a snapshot of vendors’ security, it doesn’t reflect the changing risk landscape. Your vendor and your vendors are at risk as risks can change rapidly.

This process can be automated to ensure that you have a current security assessment. Continuous monitoring uncovers and assesses your suppliers. You also receive updates on any security breaches or changes to third parties.

These steps will make it easy to manage the process. Automating it will also make the process more efficient. Automating third-party security programs is crucial. Automation allows you to quickly scale vendor security evaluations while also ensuring that your third-party vendors align with your company’s security policies and regulations.