Third-Party Risk Management Services

Data breaches must be taken seriously, as the damage they can do to your company and reputation can be insurmountable. Cybercriminals who exploit a vendor’s access to your most valuable data can expose your customers’ personal identifiable information, resulting in identity theft and other hardships. They also may be able to steal your business’ proprietary processes and other intellectual property. This can result in a loss of customer trust as well as harm your ability to compete on an even playing field. For these reasons alone, third-party risk assessment must be part of your strategy if it isn’t already. The right expertise can ensure that there are no gaps in your security when it comes to managing your vendor relationships.

Challenges of Third-Party Vendor Risk Management

Keeping your data secure while sharing it with third parties presents some significant challenges that need to be overcome. Some of these include:

• Added complexity: Connecting your network to those of your vendors means also being connected to every other entity they connect to, increasing the risk of breaches.
• Challenging compliance: Meeting all your regulatory requirements can be more difficult with third-party vendors. You will need to make sure they comply with all regulations, as well.
• Policy awareness: Keeping all your vendors appraised of your security requirements is critical to prevent breaches, and this requires a significant amount of resources and time to manage on your own.
• Scaling difficulties: If you neglect your third-party integrations at the beginning of the relationship, it can be nearly impossible to scale up when you need to.
• Manual processes: Depending on the circumstances, you may have to rely on manual processes to monitor your third-party vendors, costing you a substantial amount of work and taking focus away from your enterprise’s core competencies.

Protect your customers, incorporate appropriate security standards as part of your contracts and assess your future partners’ ability to keep information secure. HALOCK can help build and manage a specific third-party risk management (TPRM) program for your environment – whether it be an initial assessment and program development or an ongoing monitoring program for your vendors, partners, or contractors.

Third-Party Risk Program Assessments

HALOCK maps the current vendor management processes to industry standards and proven risk management frameworks. Though HALOCK evaluates the program to the highest maturity model, the goal of any third-party security assessment is to develop a portfolio of reasonable recommendations, and controls, to align heightened organization mission and compliance requirements. Working with stakeholders, the third-party risk assessment focuses on:

• Roles and responsibilities within the risk management program
• Workflow reviews of vendor onboarding, oversight and termination
• Organizational approaches to assigning the inherent risk of third party relations
• Critical risk tier definitions
• Partner assessment processes
• Personnel skillsets and training
• Current framework and policy evaluations
• Cybersecurity posture assessments

Why HALOCK for Your Vendor Risk Assessments?

HALOCK can integrate with your team to help assess your vendor’s control environment for compliance with privacy and security requirements, reporting assessment results and presenting recommendation for high-risk services to remediate potential exposure of data and security breaches. 

HALOCK offers a strong knowledge of:

• Regulatory standards that govern Information Security practices such as HIPAA, PCI, CCPA, GLBA, and state and federal privacy laws.
• Information Security Risk assessment and analysis methodologies (FFIEC, NIST, etc.).
• Information security standards (ISO 27000 series, NIST, etc.).

Plus, the team provides:

• Experience with Supplier Management GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) systems
• Qualified Security Assessors (QSAs)
• Ability to develop executive reports and deliver presentation to executives

As part of the third-party cyber risk management program, you will also receive supplementary references and documents to develop a reasonable and appropriate security program such as:

• Contractual Security Language
• Program Flow Charts
• Inherent Risk Criteria
• Vendor Risk Analyst Criteria
• Pre-Assessment Scoping Worksheets
• Vendor Assessment Planning
• Security Questionnaires
• Document Request List
• Assessment Planner
• Executive Summary

Because your risks and your partners’ risks can change daily, implementing an ongoing TPRM program can help protect your data and increase your business resiliency. A proactive approach to your vendor program can streamline your operations and reduce cost by actively:

• Demonstrating reasonable security and duty of care over critical assets that may be impacted by vendors or third parties
• Meeting and maintaining compliance requirements
• Minimizing liabilities associated with vendors or third parties
• Actively managing risks associated with vendor processes

HALOCK can partner with you to monitor and manage the TPRM process. The program includes a TPRM team that can help keep track of changes that can impact your security profile which include:

• Vendor inventory & inherent risk profiling
• Categorize Vendor Tiers (High, Significant, Moderate, Minimal, Low)
• Due Diligence Checklist for each Tier
• Remediation Tracking Process and Tools
• Define Risk Acceptance criteria and forms
• Setup Vendor Oversight per Tier
• Initiate vendor reviews

Review how to best secure your third-party risk with a program suited for you.

HALOCK is a trusted cybersecurity and risk management company headquartered in Schaumburg, IL, in the Chicago area. HALOCK partners with you to establish reasonable security controls based on your organization’s mission, objectives and social responsibility.

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