Risky business: Third-party endeavors
The English poet John Donne famously opined that “no man is an island entire of itself.” We could just as easily say the same for today’s businesses operating in the globalized, information-rich economy.
For every company offering a service or product to customers, there are potentially hundreds of other companies behind the curtain helping to facilitate that transaction’s journey: manufacturers and engineering firms, distributors and resellers, licensed service providers and software vendors, as well as subcontractors, brokers, and more.
Entering a relationship with a third party can help companies conduct business much more efficiently, but it also puts the organizations involved at higher risk of a security breach. Recent years have seen a troubling correlation emerge: the more third parties a company depends on to carry out business, the higher the frequency of security breaches and data leaks that occur.
Now, we’re not suggesting that companies scale down their third-party relationships to eliminate the risk. Rather, the goal is for companies to understand the risks associated with managing third parties so they are better…
