Third-party risk management (TPRM) is no longer just a compliance checkbox. It’s a strategic imperative. A single vulnerability in a minor vendor can lead to catastrophic data breaches, financial damage, and irreparable reputational damage. Risk management is only becoming more complex with advances in Agentic AI. To assist, we’ve put together a comprehensive playbook with an actionable framework that will help you build a mature, scalable, and resilient TPRM program.

1. Establish a Rigorous Governance and Control Set

Before you can assess your vendors, you first need to figure out what benchmarks they need to meet. This is critical, because your control set is the foundation of your entire TPRM program. It ensures consistency, objectivity, and alignment with your organization’s risk tolerance. To get a better understanding of how to select a control set, note the chart below.

Choosing the Right Framework

Thankfully, there are already established, globally recognized industry standards to build your core control set that you can start with. Your choice of framework largely depends on your industry and regulatory landscape.

ISO/IEC 27001 & 27002: Ideal for organizations operating globally, providing an internationally recognized framework for information security management systems (ISMS).

NIST SP 800-161 (Cybersecurity Supply Chain Risk Management): The gold standard for federal agencies and organizations looking for a deeply robust, comprehensive approach to supply chain security.

Shared Assessments Program (SIG): The Standardized Information Gathering (SIG) questionnaire is highly favored by TPRM professionals for its pre-built, industry-vetted question sets.

SOC 2 Type II: Particularly relevant for evaluating SaaS and cloud providers, with a primary focus on security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.

Customizing vs. Standardizing

While standard frameworks provide you with a strong baseline, a mature TPRM program tailors these controls to its specific business case. Consider your “crown jewels”. These are your more critical and operational assets; the assets, data, systems, and business processes that would cause the greatest financial, operational, legal, or reputational damage if compromised. Once you define those assets, you can proceed with aligning vendor assessments and control requirements to the specific risks that are associated with those assets. For example, if you are a healthcare organization that handles Protected Health Information (PHI), you must prioritize controls related to HIPPA and HITECH compliance. Vendors that handle patient information will likely require further scrutiny around encryption, access management, audit logging, data retention, breach notification procedures, and subcontractor oversight. 

Healthcare is not the only industry that may require additional oversight. Financial institutions must place significant emphasis on regulatory requirements, fraud prevention controls, data privacy protections, business continuity capabilities, and third-party concentration due to strict oversight from banking regulators. If you are a technology company, your organization should prioritize intellectual property. Protection, secure software development practices, cloud security controls, source code management, and software supply chain integrity. 

This risk-based approach allows organizations to move beyond a one-size-fits-all assessment model. Rather than subjecting every vendor to the same type of and level of review, vendors can be categorized into risk tiers based on unique factors such as:

• Access to sensitive data
• Connectivity to internal networks
• Dependency on the vendor’s services
• Geographic or geopolitical considerations
• Impact on critical business operations
• Regulatory exposure
• Volume of client information handled

The resulting tiered framework will look something like the graphic above, classifying vendors as low, medium, or high risk, with each tier mapped to a corresponding set of control requirements and assessment rigor. While a low-risk vendor may only require a basic security questionnaire, a high-risk vendor that supports critical business functions may undergo extensive due diligence, evidence reviews, penetration testing validation, continuous monitoring, and executive-level risk acceptance processes. The goal of TPRM is not simply to demonstrate compliance with a framework. Rather, it is to ensure that third-party controls are aligned with what matters most to your business. By combining industry standards with controls tailored to protect your organization’s crown jewels, the result will be a TPRM program that is both compliant, and genuinely effective at reducing real-world risk. With that, now we will go a step deeper and look past relying solely on questionnaires for your data gathering efforts.

2. Information Gathering Mechanisms: Looking Beyond the Questionnaire

Questionnaires are an exceptional tool to gain large quantities of information at once from a vendor. However, gathering data from third parties requires a balance between depth of insight and operational efficiency. Relying entirely on one method creates blind spots in your data. To combat this, a hybrid data-gathering mechanism would result in your organization having a robust TPRM program.

Static Questionnaires

Questionnaires remain a staple of TPRM. At Start, we feel strongly that dynamic, conditional-logic questionnaires hosted within specialized TPRM platforms will make TPRM more manageable. It removes the headaches caused by spreadsheets and emails and frees up time for other important tasks. We’ve written a lot of content on how to build out custom questionnaires, the importance of customizing questionnaires, how to qualify vendors with questionnaires, and how to build out templates for questionnaires. To learn these and more, you can head here.

Reviews and Verification

Just because a vendor answered a question a certain way does not mean you should take their word at face value. Your information-gathering journey should also include review of their claims. This can be done a few ways:

• Soc 2 Type II Reports: This is an independent auditor’s review that verifies how effectively a service organization’s internal controls safeguard customer data and ensure privacy. If the report date is older than six months, review the Bridge Letter and pay close attention to the Complimentary User Entity Controls (CUECs) as this will tell you the security measures that your organization will have to implement for the vendor’s system to remain secure. 
• ISO 27001 Certificates: Verify that the certificate is valid, issued by an accredited registrar, and that the Scope of Verification actually covers the specific service that your organization is purchasing.
• Penetration Test Reports: Request the latest external penetration test report and proof that critical and high-severity vulnerabilities were remediated. Learn what the re-testing plan is. 
• The “Old-fashioned” Way: Request screenshots, documentation, and other proof to verify what they are saying is true. Trust but verify.

On-Site and Virtual Audits

Your highest tier vendors may require more than a surface level assessment. On-site or in-depth virtual assessments should be planned for your critical vendors. These assessments are particularly valuable for vendors that host sensitive information, process regulated data (i.e. PHI or financial records), support mission-critical business operations, maintain persistent network connectivity into your internal environments, or provide cloud or data center services. If they handle your most sensitive assets, they should be the most rigorously assessed.

Seeing physical security controls in person and interviewing data center staff provides additional insights that may not be captured through a questionnaire. It also provides you with the opportunity to validate that the documented security controls are actually operating as they are intended to. Policies and certifications provide valuable insight and guidelines, but that does not mean that they fully capture the day-to-day realities of a vendor’s security posture. Direct engagement and observation will reveal the strengths, weaknesses, and potential risks that would otherwise remain unknown.

If you conduct an on-site assessment, you can evaluate physical security measures such as facility access controls, visitor management procedures, surveillance systems, environmental safeguards, and data center protections. Operational processes can be observed firsthand, control implementation can be verified and identifying whether security practices align with the documented policies can be determined. On the other hand, virtual assessments can provide many of the same benefits in instances where travel or logistics make in-person assessments impractical. In this case, video walkthroughs, live demonstrations, evidence reviews, and interviews can give your team visibility into critical security controls while maintaining efficiency and reducing costs. Here is a quick list of areas that are commonly reviewed during an in-person or virtual audit:

• Access management and privileged account controls
• Business continuity and disaster recovery readiness
• Change management and configuration controls
• Data protection and encryption practices
• Employee security awareness and training programs
• Physical security and facility protections
• Security monitoring and incident response capabilities
• Third-party and subcontractor management practices 

3. Securing Stakeholder Buy-in and Cultivating a Security Mindset

A TPRM program cannot be viewed as purely an IT security problem. Rather, it is an organizational culture challenge. If executive teams and legal teams view TPRM as a bureaucratic bottleneck, they will actively bypass it, leading to shadow IT and unvetted risk. 

Aligning TPRM with Business Strategy

Executives are less concerned with the mechanics of vendor assessments and are more focused on understanding how third-party relationships could impact company revenue, brand image and trust, regulatory compliance, and business continuity. To gain support from leadership and the board, TPRM should be framed as an enabler of business resilience, not a cost center or administrative burden. Instead, show the executive team how proactive risk management prevents critical operational interruptions, protects brand equity, and satisfies regulatory requirements that could otherwise halt business expansion. At the same time, it is also supporting growth, innovation, and operational resilience. 

Security Awareness

Instilling a security mindset across the organization can seem intimidating. In a recent blog, ISE showcased a 90-day plan for how psychology can be used to help build a security culture within your organization. This plan showcases a clear timeline, along with a checklist highlighting key milestones to guide you in your efforts. To access this plan and learn more about how understanding human behavior will benefit the security awareness culture in your organization, check out the ISE blog.

4. Lifecycle Risk Architecture: Managing Remediations and Mitigations

Identifying vulnerabilities, gaps, and non-compliance during an assessment is only half the battle. The true measure of a mature and successful TPRM program is how it tracks, manages, and resolves those identified risks. As mentioned earlier, managing vendor risk via email and spreadsheets is not a plan for success. Information will get lost, deadlines missed, and accountability dissolves. Instead, relying on a TPRM platform that helps you centralize, streamline, and simplify your VRM process will help you in making large-scale business decisions more accurately and confidently. 

When a third-party is underdoing an assessment, they will ultimately want to know: ‘what do I have to fix to do business with you?’ Start takes those items of shortcoming that are identified during the assessment and extracts a remediation plan. It is crucial to outline how you wish the third-party to address the items of concern so they can action items quickly and to your standards. Remember that not every facility is the same, so it is important to be proactive and collaborate with your third parties so they too can feel the investment in security changes are worth their while as well. Ecosystems are only as secure as their least secure partner. Taking the time to understand your third-parties limitations may also be an opportunity to help them grow. 

Once remediations are addressed, scheduling regular check-ins will help to ensure that your standards continue to be met. Things can change quickly at facilities and those changes are often not communicated and can result in further security issues. By following up with your vendors periodically and asking if anything has changed with their security posture, you can identify if another review is necessary or not. 

Next Steps

To put these tips into action, those leading or creating a program should focus on these three immediate, high-impact steps:

1. Audit: Establish a definitive and centralized list of every third-party vendor currently utilizing your resources or processing your data. This list may change so have a way for your business stakeholders to communicate changes in vendor usage.
2. Define the Tiering Criteria: Determine what constitutes your different level of Tiers for vendors based on data access and operational criticality. 
3. Deploy a Streamlined Tool: Move away from spreadsheets and invest in a dedicated tool that can automate questionnaires and remediation tracking. Once this has occurred, you can work on your information gathering methods. 

These initial steps may seem simple, but they could be the difference between a reactive compliance experience and a proactive risk management program. Once you’ve taken the first steps, your organization will be prepared to pursue building a mature, scalable, and resilient TPRM program that not only satisfies regulatory expectations but also strengthens security, protects critical assets, and enables your team to move forward with confidence. If your team would like to create a TPRM playbook unique to your brand or needs help scaling your operation, reach out to a member of our team to learn about how Start can simplify and streamline your VRM journey.  

The post The TPRM Playbook for Security Leaders appeared first on Start.

Step 1: Identify assets that need protecting 

When evaluating your assets that need protecting, it could be helpful to break them into several categories. For example: 

• Physical assets 

• Laptops, prototypes, cellphones, servers, physical data centers, and workstations 

• Digital assets 

• Trade secrets, intellectual property, proprietary software, client databases and records, employee records, financial records, and cloud-based applications 

• Human assets 

• Key personnel, executives, and third-party vendors or contractors with access to sensitive information 

Step 2:  Identify what harm could come if those assets are compromised 

Now that assets have been identified, the next step is to determine what would happen should those assets be compromised. This needs to be a detailed analysis that goes beyond the obvious “bad things would happen.” I recommend utilizing the CIA Triad. The CIA Triad has evolved since its early stages of development in the 1970s, but today the CIA Triad stands for confidentiality, integrity, and availability. This is a widely used model for developing cybersecurity policies across various industries. Here are some ways you can break down and classify your assets, based on the triad: 

Confidentiality: What if sensitive data was stolen or exposed? Think of assets such as employee or financial information, client data, or proprietary information. This can lead to legal issues, reputational damage, and competitive disadvantage. 

Integrity: What if data, such as product designs or financial records, was corrupted or tampered with? This could lead to critical operational failures and reduce the trustworthiness of the company. 

Availability: What if your systems or data suddenly became inaccessible because of a denial-of-service or ransomware attack? This would halt operations company-wide, impact productivity, and lead to substantial financial losses due to the downtime. 

Once identification has occurred, it’s now time to apply that hacker mindset and work towards understanding your adversaries. To do this, a threat model exercise can assist. Threat modeling forces you to acknowledge the who, why, and how when it comes to your potential attackers. By understanding these threats, you can then tailor your defenses more effectively. If you need assistance in implementing a threat model, check out our downloadable threat modeling exercise (and if you want to take it a step further and work with an ethical hacker to build out a threat model for your organization, reach out today!) 

Step 3: Determine controls that will help protect those assets (industry or internally created) 

Controls are the precautions that you put in place to protect your assets and mitigate any identified risks. There are a variety of controls that a company can put in place, but here are the broad categories: 

Administrative Controls: Incident response plans, policies, procedures, and security awareness trainings 

Physical Controls: Access badges, environmental controls, locked server rooms, security cameras, and even security guards if appropriate  

Technical Controls: Antivirus software, access controls, encryption, firewalls, intrusion detection/prevention systems (IDS/IPS), multi-factor authentication, and password managers 

Step 4: Assess the human and the operational perimeter  

This may come as a surprise, but it’s the people who interact with your data that are both your greatest vulnerability as well as your most important line of defense. A robust risk assessment must look beyond the “what”, and focus on the who, and the how. 

People interact with your assets in a variety of ways, and while it’s important to know what those ways are, it’s also important to assess the individuals as well. To minimize risk, users should only have the necessary permissions to perform their daily tasks and no more. Access should not be granted based on convenience. An individual on the sales team should not have access to employee records at the organization that employs them. A member of the development team should not have access to company financial records. By enforcing a “need-to-know” system within your organization, you ensure that if one account becomes compromised, the reach of the attacker is strictly limited. With this, the IT department should be periodically reviewing who has access to what and that they immediately revoke access when an employee is no longer with your organization. 

Additionally, running regular security trainings and enforcing a strong security culture can help your staff learn secure practices. This can help your team recognize phishing attempts, social engineering, and more. However, training the team is only half of the battle; this must be backed by a culture where employees will feel empowered to report suspicious activity without fear of ridicule or reprisal.  

It is important to note that it’s not just the people, but also the processes, configurations, and policies that also need to be looked at.  You can’t fault a person for something that there isn’t a policy or process for, so it is important to evaluate what you have, so you can figure out what is missing. For example, 

• Are you revoking access the moment an employee leaves your company? 

• Is your software regularly patched? 

• Does your software follow modern security standards? 

• Do you have a policy for visitor sign in? 

• If not, then you have unauthorized access. 

It is important to continue this list and constantly question what you have. Ultimately, the content of assessments will vary based on your industry and needs. This could range from looking at things like vaults and physical asset needs, to all digital reviews that involve networking, cybersecurity, and other domains. At Start, we suggest considering industry standards as a good baseline for your company and industry needs. 

Step 5: Remediate shortcomings 

It’s impossible to remediate everything at once. So, it’s important to create a priority list of which vulnerabilities need to be addressed first. A risk matrix could assist your team in mapping out risks based on their likelihood of occurring. It can also outline the impact that the risk would have and how severe the consequences would be. You can use the risk template below as a template for your organization. You can download a PDF version of this template below

The post How to Assess Cybersecurity Risks in Your Organization appeared first on Start.

From onboarding, maintenance, monitoring, and assessing, your team is spending long hours on administrative work each time a new vendor is brought on, not to mention a constant influx of new vendors that keep the pipeline full. Adopting a dedicated platform allows users to reduce the hours spent on repetitive administrative tasks, which ultimately can bring substantial cost savings and allow users to focus on greater areas of risk. TPRM tools add additional levels of visibility to your vendor ecosystem that you may not have previously had. With standardized controls, service specific questionnaires and remediations to address shortcomings, that visibility will level-up your decision making, as teams will be able to quickly identify where the highest risks lie, which vendors are critical to successful operations, and where additional controls may be required. As a result, resource allocation can become more strategic, onboarding will become more predictable, and risk-based decisions are easier to justify to stakeholders. Your team gains greater visibility, can make educated decisions faster, and you gain money back in the budget. 

The investment into a TPRM tool also strengthens compliance posture. Regulations and industry standards are increasingly requiring demonstratable oversight of your third parties. Luckily, TPRM software can provide your team with assessment-ready transparency. Assessments, communications, and key decisions are captured in a dedicated record. This reduces assessment fatigue on the part of your team, while also decreases the risk of non-compliance. Automated quarterly check-in’s with third-parties can help ensure that they remain in compliance with your company policies and provide monitoring for the duration of an engagement. This reduces the likelihood of expensive incidents, such as data breaches or regulatory violations, as a TPRM tool is able to provide continuous monitoring, automated alerts, and standardized controls. Plus, it ensures that your company can demonstrate robust oversight of its vendor ecosystem at any time, because evidence is no longer spread across emails, folders, and spreadsheets.  

Assessments can be very broad and time-consuming. Sometimes they involve an on-site visit while other times they can be a remote review. The time it takes for an assessment to take place can become lengthy when assessments are not organized. A TPRM software can help organize the process and keep the pipelines moving automatically. Resources only have to step in when there is an exception to the process or when the assessment actually has to be performed and reviewed. The assessment itself can also become unwieldy when there are significant numbers of controls. A software that helps automatically reduce controls not in scope by control mapping and allocation can reduce the manual effort of an assessors having to determine when is in scope or not. This allows for more time spent on the actual risks themselves when the scoping is performed by the system. 

TPRM software also offers a sustainable alternative to staffing concerns. As your company grows, so does the complexity of your vendor ecosystem. When all the processes are handled manually, that means those processes can only scale by adding more people. As a result, accuracy and consistency can suffer. However, by standardizing workflows, centralizing documentation, and automating repetitive tasks, your organization can scale vendor oversight without drastically increasing your headcount. This makes investing in TPRM tools not just a long-term cost-saving measure, but a contributor to long-term plans of organizational growth. 

Ultimately, investing in a TPRM tool is not just about adding the latest technology to your tech stack. Rather, it is a choice that will strengthen your risk posture, improve operational efficiency, save money, and protect your organization from potentially costly third-party errors. As your company grows and the vendor ecosystem along with it, you’ll need a modern, scalable approach to vendor risk management. TPRM software provides your organization with the structure, automation, and visibility that is required to be able to manage risk with confidence. With streamlined workflows, customized questionnaires, audit readiness, and a timeline of actions taken with a vendor, you’ll be able to make informed business decisions that set your team up for success. 

Need help building out your TPRM program? Reach out to the experts at Start for a complimentary consultation. 

The post The Business Case for Investing in TPRM Software appeared first on Start.

Even though companies are introducing more and more third-party groups to their organization, they are struggling to keep pace with the scale and complexity of modern vendor ecosystems, resulting in being exposed to breaches, outages, or compliance failures. This disconnect raises a critical question for business and security leaders alike: 

Why? 

This blog will explore the potential root causes of TPRM failures and provide you with actionable insights that result in the creation of a risk-resilient vendor program that sets your organization up for success and security. 

Understaffed Teams 

Working with limited resources puts a lot of strain on the existing staff of your organization. Resource scarcity is one of the most frequently cited obstacles to effective TPRM. According to GRC Report, nearly 70% of teams report insufficient staffing to effectively manage risk across vendors. With inadequate headcount and outdated tools, teams are falling behind on assessments, remediation tracking, and monitoring. This can result in an increased risk of emerging threats going unnoticed.  

If this is a problem within your organization, we recommend creating documentation or information sheets that help management understand the potential threats as this will increase their likelihood of buy-in. Management that buys in into the program also help with budget for the teams to ensure proper staffing so that risk can be managed.  

Lack of Stakeholder Support 

TPRM requires buy-in from across enterprises, yet many programs lack the support that they need to influence vendor decisions or secure remediation commitments. Instead, program leaders are met with individuals that skirt around security requirements and the risk items raised by the TPRM teams may never be resolved, resulting in widening exposure to risks. Security can often be seen as red-tape that teams do not want to deal with, often because they do not see the value it actually provides to the company. 

If a lack of stakeholder support is persistent within your organization, they won’t allocate budget, teams will be understaffed, and the risk that matters likely won’t be appropriately mitigated. We recommend getting stakeholder buy-in early, and often. This makes the biggest difference out of anything else we could suggest. Make stakeholders feel like they are part of the process so that they understand the importance of TPRM. Facilitate discussions to identify areas of risk to the company and ensure stakeholder buy-in on these. If the risk is not important to the stakeholders, then a leak won’t be seen as a problem. Additionally, keep stakeholders informed regularly so that they see the value in the program as it grows and evolves with the security landscape. 

Misunderstanding What Really Matters 

Many companies have no clear understanding of what’s actually risky to their company because there is a misalignment between risk activities and business context. Therefore, they cover either the wrong things or not enough in their audits. Big risks are missed that threaten revenue, compliance, and trust. Many companies also fall into a pit of treating all vendors the same and deprioritize business-critical risk factors by using generic questionnaires instead of ones designed for each vendor. If you want to learn more about how to avoid treating TPRM as a “one size fits all” concept, check out our previous blog on the topic. 

Many years ago, a colleague shared with me a story from her previous employer who did not invest in security early on. The company saw no point, and were okay if data was leaked (crazy, right?!). Unsurprisingly, there was a massive leak. This resulted in a negative public opinion of the organization, and their reputation was now on the line. Suddenly, they cared about security. This was costly in both a financial and reputational sense, so understanding it earlier will help set teams up for success. 

We suggest developing a risk taxonomy that is tied to known business priorities (this is a great time to involve stakeholders and make them feel like a part of the process. Plus, you get insight on what is most important to them!) in order to make sure that there is an understanding of what the company’s risk threshold is if something were to go wrong. Commonly seen business priorities are contractual obligations, compliance obligations, company reputation, data access levels, critical service impact, and regulatory exposure. If you understand your risk landscape properly, then companies can staff accordingly to help manage the volume of risk. 

Next Steps 

Many TPRM programs are set up for failure due to a fundamental misalignment: risk management activities are not built around their actual business impact. Understaffed teams, lack of stakeholder support, and lack of understanding of risk can practically guarantee that risks remain unmanaged. To be an organization that succeeds when it comes to TPRM, we suggest the following: 

• Gain stakeholders buy-in early 

• Treat TPRM as a strategic risk function, not a compliance requirement 

• Equip teams with staffing needs and stakeholder authority 

• Connect risk metrics to business outcomes 

By addressing these core problematic areas, organizations can transform TPRM into a core process of their business model that protects them against data breaches, faulty operations, and ensures quality brand reputation. If your organization needs assistance in building out a TPRM program or you aren’t sure where to begin, the team at Start is here to help. Contact us to talk to one of our experts about your TPRM needs. 

The post Why Most TPRM Programs Fail (and How to Fix Them) appeared first on Start.

When it comes to TPRM compliance in the context of third-party risk, there are a number of vendor risk monitoring best practices your organization needs to keep in mind. 

1. Vendor Onboarding 

1. In a 2025 study by Mitratech, results showed that 45% of organizations onboard vendors before completing a full risk assessment. Oftentimes, organizations onboard first and assess later because of a lack of communication between the security teams and the business teams who make the decisions on vendor usage. Essentially, the business units tell the security teams about vendors too late. At Start, we encourage the business units to be more engaged in the assessment process. The business units are part of the process and should be engaged all throughout the process, because the more engaged the business units are involved with the assessment process, the faster assessments will tend to go and vendors can get cleared ahead of time.  

2. This should include assessing the security posture of that group, as well as analyzing their data handling procedures, continuity plans, contractual obligations, and more. This should include verifying security certifications, incident and incident response history, and compliance efforts. 

2. Ongoing Monitoring 

1. One study found that only 29% of organizations are assessing risk across the vendor lifecycle. Vendor risk assessment should not be limited to the onboarding process. Instead, your team should monitor vendor performance, track changes in a vendor risk profile, and maintain visibility across the vendor lifecycle. Due diligence is critical not just at the beginning of the lifecycle stage, but throughout. is critical not just at the beginning of the lifecycle stage, but throughout. 

2.  Because third-parties are handling your data, your organization must ensure that appropriate audits of compliance are taking place. At Start, we find our clients assess on a one-to-two-year basis because the duration of their projects often last that long. We recommend that active vendors are reviewed annually if they are still performing work for a company. If volume does not allow for that cadence, we suggest bi-annually, with quarterly check-ins. 

3. Companies should determine what standards they wish to use for compliance and ensure assessments are tailored to those standards. Start can handle any control set a company wishes to assess against, whether that be an industry standard, or an internally created one. 

4. Create a plan for check-ins on high-risk vendors that fits with your needs. Reviews should happen quarterly at a minimum. 

3. Incident Response 

1. According to research in 2025 by the Ponemon Institute, 54% of security incidents now involved third-party data exposure. If a vendor experiences a breach, organizations need to have a plan in place so that they can respond quickly and effectively. The plan should define how vendors notify your team, how communication with regulators and stakeholders will be handled, and how evidence will be collected for compliance reporting.  Vendors need to be able to provide regulators with documented evidence of what happened, why, and what steps they took to remediate it. They also need to communicate any fault. 

4. Roles and Responsibilities 

1. Policies and documentation about roles and responsibilities should exist so that ownership of day-to-day operations is well understood.   

2. For organizations that do not have a dedicated TPRM department, they could create cross-departmental councils that include staff from departments such as IT, compliance, procurement, and legal. This ensures accountability at each stage of the vendor lifecycle. 

Challenges in 2026 

As we navigate 2026, there are several factors that will raise the bar for TPRM and compliance alignment. First, vendor ecosystems are expanding, with many vendor organizations now subcontracting out work to fourth-parties. Gartner predicts that by 2026, 75% of companies will experience a third-party related disruption. This is up from 55% in 2023. This increases the complexity of monitoring potential risks and data compliance.  

Additionally, resource constraints exist and will continue to exist. Research shows that an estimated 70% of TPRM departments believe that they are under resourced. Limited staff and budgets can result in the entirety of the vendor base not being appropriately managed. To combat limited resources, many organizations are increasingly adopting tools to help meet regulatory expectations. While many companies are running their database out of an Excel spreadsheet, Start implements the concept of a vendor database and helps to categorize the risk based on the services a vendor provides.  

Finally, the days of checking boxes are fading away. Today, regulators want you to be able to demonstrate your processes. At Start, we have always encouraged a ‘trust but verify’ model. Checkboxes only cover the trust part. There is no verification that what the vendors say they do is actually what is in place. For example, you wouldn’t just give someone plans to a house and tell them to build it without checking in and seeing how it is being built. Seeing how things are implemented and making sure things are up to code is part of the building process and prevents issues once the house is finished. It’s the same with security; seeing how processes are implemented gives a sense of trust when the vendor actually begin to work on a project.  

Emerging technologies also present new considerations. As AI-powered vendors become more common, new regulations and policies will need to be created. Additionally, tools will need to be modified to be able to accurately monitor AI-powered organizations. Start will be featuring additional AI insights later in 2026, so stay tuned! 

Addressing Challenges in 2026 

We’ve outlined a few challenges your TPRM program may face in 2026. Now, we will go over how to remediate these challenges, for a safe and secure 2026. 

1. Don’t bolt security on, build it in to your lifecycle. Integrate vendor risk checks as part of onboarding, renewal, and contract amendment workflows. 

2. Leverage TPRM automation tools where feasible. When you move away from spreadsheets and email, you give your team time back in their day. For example, Start automates the scoping of assessment processes. It cuts the assessment down to only include things that apply to the vendor, which saves assessors a large amount of time because they won’t have to figure out what is in scope; the system does it for them. Process points are also automated, along with the automated sending of questionnaires, and automated remediation items based on questionnaire responses.  

1. Leaning on AI to reduce overhead and workloads as teams are decreasing and workloads are increasing. At Start, we will be closely monitoring AI trends throughout 2026 but encourage teams to still utilize human validation, especially when there could be risks at stake that could cost a company financial loss. AI should not handle and monitor all of the risk, but it can assist in the effort to identify things that an assessor can then validate. Trust…but verify! 

3. Segment vendors based on risk. By classifying vendors by associated risk, you can focus your due diligence and team resources where they are needed the most. 

4. Invest in trainings and workshops. By investing in internal awareness, you equip your teams to be well versed and prepared when it comes to identifying vendor risks that need immediate attention and for staying up to date on regulatory requirements for third-party risk. 

5. Adapt. Regulations can change rapidly based on evolving threats. Ensure your team stays up to date and is researching current trends and laws. 

TPRM is not just about checking boxes. It’s about aligning your vendor management with regulatory requirements, maintaining visibility throughout vendor lifecycles, developing risk-based processes, and demonstrating well documented and repeatable practices. By viewing TPRM as a strategic investment rather than a compliance burden, your organization can be positioned for greater competitive advantage, stakeholder confidence and successfully building vendor trust and resilience. 

If your organization hasn’t evaluated the performance of their TPRM program within the last year, consider contacting the team at Start for assistance on a gap assessment to determine if your program is effectively prepared for vendor risk. 

The post Third-Party Risk Management in 2026 appeared first on Start.

1.    Understand Where Your Risk Lies in the First Place

Assessments can be scary and frustrating for third-party vendors, especially when they are often assessed for controls that don’t make sense for their company. Putting the responsibility on the third-party to show why something doesn’t apply to them only increases friction and resistance to controls that indeed do apply. To avoid this friction, leverage Start’s control mapping module, where you can indicate what controls apply to which types of third-parties. This will reduce friction and give the vendors the assurance that they will only be asked things that are in scope for their services.

2.    Use Risk Levels

Not every risk should be measured the same, nor does every company weigh risk the same. Some remediation asks have smaller risks than others and some hold more of a risk to company assets. Start enables users to customize the Risk values to ensure that every company can weigh Remediation items in a way that works for them. Users can also choose to enforce due dates based on the risk levels to ensure timely compliance by third-parties.

3.    Leverage a Pre-Defined Remediation Bank

If you have a set of controls that you’re measuring compliance against, chances are you know what is expected to meet those controls. You can easily create pre-defined Remediation items in Start’s Remediation Bank feature! Many Bank items can be created per control and then Assessors can add those to the Assessment Report and modify them if needed. This helps cut down on report writing and allows Assessors to then tailor the Remediations to the specific needs of your vendors.

4.    Designate a Representative to Facilitate Remediations

In many cases, there may be different teams responsible for monitoring Remediation efforts across third-parties. Start allows Admins to setup Remediators, which are different users from the Assessors who may perform the assessments. These users can be assigned to records and receive Remediation updates for third-parties. This helps give the third-parties a dedicated individual to interact with during Remediation.

5.    Create a Remediation Plan

Assessment Reports are often full of a lot of information, but what third-parties ultimately want to know is, “what do I have to fix?” This is why creating Remediation plans helps to streamline the Remediation process and gives the third-parties an action plan of things they need to address. Start extracts Remediations from Assessment Reports and creates an actionable plan for third-parties to track their Remediation efforts through. This helps Remediation efforts to move along smoothly and in an organized fashion.

6.    Be Willing to Assist Your Vendors with Specific Needs or Use Cases

It’s important to remember that no two third-parties are the same. While your company may have specific controls third-parties have to meet, third-parties also have internal company policies and guidelines. It’s important to work with your third-parties to help them achieve your compliance standards. Placing unreasonable expectations on third-parties can lead to broken trust, relationship severing, and ultimately a disruption to business processes. Ensuring that both companies are collaborating, and that third-parties feel like the security teams are there to support them, can lead to timelier compliance and increased trust between groups.

What Next?

Managing Remediations doesn’t have to be complicated with platforms like Start. Take advantage of streamlined communication and automation features to help organize the chaos with remediations and help your third-parties achieve compliance with your company’s standards. Take control of your Remediation efforts; contact us for a demo of Start today.

The post 6 Ways to Streamline Remediation Efforts with Start appeared first on Start.

1. Budget

Problem: Creating a budget is hard, especially when your stakeholders don’t see the value in the pain points your team is facing day in and day out. Finding ways to prioritize security, solutions, and headcount is important when you’re working with a tight financial situation.

Solution: Find ways to automate the small things so that your team can focus on the big picture of your security needs.Start can help with automation, which can combat your headcount dilemma.

2. Managing Multiple Vendors

Problem: Your team is trying to keep track of contacts, documents and contracts, and communication across potentially hundreds of vendors, and likely across different platforms and tools.

Solution: Using a vendor management system like Start helps you centralize information, as well as automate a lot of those tedious TPRM tasks, which takes away the stress of trying to manage multiple vendor relationships. We have a parent-child relationship that tracks different vendor locations under one company, which allows you to keep all your information better organized.

3. Building Trust

Problem: When managing critical suppliers or other important third-party vendors, it is important to build and maintain a strong level of trust. When there is a lack of visibility and transparency, it leads to frustration, confusion, and an unwillingness to collaborate. It can take years to build trust, but it only takes one moment to lose it. Prioritize building trust with the vendors that are an integral part of complex supply chains. For example, the Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry has a complex and supply chain that involves multiple stakeholders. It involves multiple stakeholders and has continuously changing consumer demands.

Solution: At Start, we strive to provide our M&E clients with unprecedented visibility and influence over their third-party vendors, which can be done through the use of automatic customized questionnaires. Customized questionnaires provide you with the opportunity to learn how your vendors and suppliers are managing cybersecurity risk. It also gives your team a chance to manage the relationship more effectively and mitigate overall risk. Questionnaires provide you with information for the risk assessment processes and are critical to ongoing monitoring.

Have the tough conversations. Focus on more collaborative conversations around strategic growth, spend, enhancing performance, and advancing your team and vendors to the next level of success. Walk into 2024 with a trust-based mindset and find ways to simplify your current TPRM programs by learning about different ways to improve.

Keep lines of communication open. Vendor Roster is a business facing portal that updates you throughout the process, both in the tool and via emails about vendors that you have subscribed to. It keeps you up to date on any delayed communications, reminders, and due dates. This is critical as it helps you stay up to date on many moving parts.

4. Vendor Compliance

Problem: Ensuring that your vendors are following your policies is critical to the success of your organization, but this can be challenging to monitor when you are managing multiple vendors at once who are located around the world. Mitigating compliance risk will protect your business from unnecessary levels of risk that are caused by things such as insufficient control systems, lack of due diligence, lack of training, and human error.

Solution: Clearly communicate compliance requirements during the onboarding process with each new vendor. Conduct regular audits to ensure compliance is taking place.

Also tailor the controls in questionnaires to the vendors based on services provided so that they can work on what is most important to them instead of giving them hundreds of controls, then can instead is focus on the ones relevant to them. Not every vendor needs to meet the same controls, so why waste their time with control questions that aren’t relevant to them? Instead, save them time by having them focus on things specific to the service they are providing as your vendor, and save your team time by not having to review lengthy questionnaires! Start automatically reduces the questionnaires based on your standards and tags to the service types. So, costume makers aren’t answering questions about film production, and film production isn’t answering questions about costumes!

5. Close the Knowledge Gap

Problem: Offering trainings is important to keep your vendors up to date on the latest security practices for your organization. The tech industry and cyber criminals are constantly evolving, and your vendors need to know how to protect your projects that they are working on from malicious attackers.

Solution: Schedule trainings and knowledge checks on a regular basis to ensure that your vendors are following best practices. To cut down on the chaos of trying to track multiple trainings for hundreds of vendors, Start offers a training module, which has the capability to allow you ensure that your vendors are completing your required security trainings by tracking and assigning trainings on an individual basis. 

Conclusion

We know that managing third party risk can be a daunting and overwhelming task when you don’t have the team or budget you need. Whether its managing multiple vendors, budget restrictions, or ensuring vendor compliance, we hear you. Here’s what we recommend:

1. Automate the small things to save budget for bigger things.
2. Use a vendor risk management system to centralize information.
3. Use customized questionnaires to build trust with your vendor and keep lines of communication open.
4. Close the knowledge gap by enforcing regular trainings and knowledge checks.

 If you’re looking for new ways to strengthen your TPRM program in 2024, consider talking to the experts at Start!

The post 5 Challenges of Third-Party Risk Management and How to Overcome Them in 2024 appeared first on Start.

In this article, we will discuss the following five methods for stakeholder involvement:

• Give stakeholders process visibility
• Listen to stakeholder input.
• Engage third-party vendors.
• Make your team easily accessible.
• Offer a helping hand.

5 Ways To Improve Vendor Relationship Management

1. Give Stakeholders Process Visibility

Security processes are often black holes to stakeholders. They know they need a security clearance but often need to learn what it means. Educating your stakeholders on your assessment process makes them feel more connected and better informed about where things are. If the process is no longer a black hole, there will be more trust in engaging the security teams. Start allows Business stakeholders to view Vendor profiles in their portal and see exactly where they are in the assessment process.

2. Listen To Stakeholders Input

If there are process breakdowns or criticism from the business, listen to that feedback and be transparent about changes that your team is making to ease those concerns. Is the process taking too long? Is it delaying deliverables? Are there not enough updates? Explaining or sympathizing with your stakeholders often results in more empathy toward your team. This will make the business feel more like a partner to your team and increase collaboration.

3. Engage Third-Party Vendors

Assessments take work. Sometimes, third-party vendors are also resistant to doing what security asks. Your business stakeholders often have established trusting relationships with these vendors. Engaging stakeholders to help move the vendor along or get assistance with communicating with the vendor can result in fewer delays and more transparency. Stakeholders are vital to shorter assessments and better partnerships with third-party vendors. Start allows users to customize email communications to copy stakeholders associated with each vendor. This helps the business to step in on issues, ask the vendor for updates directly, or help push deliverables over the finish line for assessments.

4. Make Your Team Easily Accessible

Forms, questionnaires, and email, the options for engagement are endless. Giving your stakeholders a dedicated place where they know they can reach your security team will help streamline communication and allow a painless submission process. A one-stop shop can decrease confusion and allow for sharing more transparent updates. Start offers a Roster portal where stakeholders can submit new requests, sign up for email updates, and see assessment statuses, all from a single location.

5. Offer a Helping Hand

Security should not halt business. That is part of Start’s vision statement! Showing your stakeholders that you are there to help them build prosperous (and secure) relationships with third-party vendors will only add to your team’s business value. Engaging stakeholders in assessments, giving visibility, and educating the business on the process will help remove some of the daily red tape stigma many security teams face. Show the business your team is an asset that is there to help, not be the reason their projects get delayed.

Vendor Relationship Management With Start

Start was made with vendor relationship management in mind. Security should become part of the business process, not be seen as the red tape that blocks business. Through Start’s Roster interface, your business stakeholders can gain increased visibility into assessments, receive communications between security and third-party vendors and submit new assessment requests, all from one place! Help remove the red tape stigma from your company. Ask for a Start demo today!

The post Vendor Relationship Management: 5 Ways To Involve Stakeholders appeared first on Start.

Hundreds of control sets are out there, so where do people start? Whether companies care about ISO or NIST or have internal standards they assess against, Start can organize and appropriately map those controls to vendors.

Streamline Vendor Security With Industry Control Sets

Most vendor assessments have criteria associated with predefined industries or service-specific regulatory frameworks, such as HIPAA or PCI compliance. In addition to these, assessors may also rely on internal security standards. Within Start, you can create various control sets regardless of origin.

If assessors require particular security controls for a service area, you can create derivative controls within Start. Rather than manually updating that criterion every time a service-related organization gets evaluated, Start enables a control set that can be used repeatedly for vendors in the same service area or industry. This saves valuable time and improves efficiency during the assessment process. Over time, as the security landscape changes, you can easily update control sets to add or remove criteria.

Tagging Within Industry Control Sets

Scope creep with select vendors is one of the biggest frustrations for assessors, as every vendor functions uniquely. After all, you want to avoid applying printing standards to a catering company and vice versa. For that reason, having tailored control sets is crucial. Otherwise, you will likely end up with a long list of control sets for any given assessment; this is where tags come in handy.

Granular tagging is a foundational aspect of Start. Start uses tagging functionality in assessments and questionnaires to help assessors pre-determine which control sets apply to which vendor industries. Assessors can select custom vendor tags based on service or industry with associated control sets. Our industry or service area approach to assessments creates a dynamic control set for each vendor so the assessors don’t have to manually figure out the applicable criteria. With this consideration, assessors bypass the constant need for review and focus on whether criteria meet vendor security standards.

Assessment Reports at the Click of a Button

Assessment reports are typically where the vendor assessment process becomes drawn out. Once the assessment is completed, assessors must compile their findings and recommendations into a report for the vendor to take action on remediations. They also have to create a report for every assessment. Traditionally, it can take several weeks for assessors to complete their reports due to the manual nature of transferring their findings to a document. This bottleneck can be frustrating for all parties involved.

With Start, all of the assessment information, including assessor notes and remediation actions, is entered directly into the platform during the assessment process, either on the web platform or the offline mobile application. Once completed, you can click a button to instantly format a dynamic PDF assessment report that uses the tailored control sets. The assessment report and remediations are kept in the vendor’s record for reference, and future assessments will always be derived from the latest controls in scope. Vendors and business stakeholders can view the report and their remediation actions directly in the Start platform so it gets noticed and remembered in an email inbox.

Streamline Vendor Security Assessments with Start

Industry and service area control sets play a vital role in an efficient vendor assessment process, enabling organizations to evaluate their vendors’ security posture and compliance more quickly and effectively. By customizing control sets to align with their organization’s requirements or a vendor’s specific service or industry, companies can achieve thorough risk mitigation while alleviating the workload and assessment time for assessors. Allowing for highly tailored control sets is just one of the many ways Start’s vendor risk management solution enables a streamlined vendor assessment process. To learn more about Start, watch this quick video or reach out to book a demo with our team.

The post Vendor Security: How To Use Industry Control Sets appeared first on Start.

For most organizations, relying on hundreds of third-party suppliers, partners, subcontractors, and agents to deliver their services is a matter of doing business. Relationships with third-party providers help organizations reduce costs. Still, third parties come with different types of vendor risks, including reputational, operational, information security, and compliance risks, among others, and all of these risks must be assessed and managed.

With all these types of risk in mind, it is critical to take a holistic approach to risk management throughout each step of pre-contracting, contracting, and post-contract monitoring. Only then will you achieve risk-aversion throughout the third-party lifecycle.

What Is The Third-Party Risk Management Lifecycle

No matter the size or industry, every company engages with third-party vendors and needs to grant them access to their network and data, expanding the risk surface. Consequently, more is required to secure data and implement defensive measures in your organization because your vendor may fail to protect your data and the data of your customers.

Today, third-party risk management is more urgent than ever due to digital transformation and globalization. When more third-party vendors enter your network, third-party data breaches can be more damaging, so it’s imperative to have visibility and control over every data touch point to avoid them. Besides, third-party risk management regulations are rising in almost every industry. Companies must ensure their third-party ecosystem is as safe as their internal network to comply with them.

Understanding your company’s third-party risk management lifecycle is crucial to identifying and remediating vendor and supplier risks. But it’s a common mistake to think that third-party risk management (TPRM) is a one-time risk assessment and remediation initiative.

The reality is that your company encounters distinct risks at each step of the vendor relationship. You must establish a comprehensive vendor risk management program to address the entire vendor lifecycle. The third-party risk management lifecycle is highly detailed and varies by industry; each company has a different perspective. Most lifecycles have a five to eight-step process, and there are several general steps that all organizations should have in place.

Steps In The Third-Party Risk Management Lifecycle

It’s a mistake to view the third-party lifecycle within the limits of signing a contract, implementing a third-party product or service, and terminating it. The contract is only one component of the third-party lifecycle. It’s essential to consider all the steps of managing a third party throughout the entire relationship with your company.

There are three main stages of a third party’s lifecycle, each containing many subsequent steps. These are natural points in the relationship, and it’s important to understand risk throughout them and ensure vendor risk mitigation:

• Pre-contract—before you enter a formal relationship with a third party
• Contracting—when you negotiate key terms and provisions and determine how you will share risk between the parties
• Post-contract—after you enter into the relationship with a third-party vendor all of the way through termination.

Let’s take a look at each of these three steps:

Step One: Pre-Contract Risk Management

Pre-contract risk management starts before you enter a contractual agreement with a third-party vendor. After identifying new third-party providers, you must perform the third-party risk assessment to determine its inherent risk and criticality. You have to look at the types of information each third-party vendor handles and then review the potential financial, reputational, and legal impact of a data breach.

Identifying these inherent third-party risks is critical because you will use this information to conduct risk-based due diligence on them. This is also an essential step in risk management because it allows you to dive deeper into the third-party vendor’s policies, systems, and controls. The vendor must respond to the questionnaire and provide relevant evidence for each control. This information helps you understand any residual risks that you need to address.

Step Two: Contracting

If the risks are mitigated, it’s time to negotiate the contract terms and begin working with a vetted third-party vendor. You need to develop sound contracting principles and provisions. It’s essential to understand which risks are being assumed by the parties and achieve the right balance in risk distribution.

A firm contract is critical for managing third-party risk, so never rush through contract creation. As you start working with a third party, you should continue reviewing the contract to verify if the vendor meets expectations and service level agreements.

Step Three: Post-Contract Monitoring

Post-contract monitoring is the last stage in the third-party risk management lifecycle that starts after signing the contract. This stage gets neglected, but it’s where the real risk begins. The post-contract monitoring process should include these four critical activities:

• Continuous monitoring allows you to maintain a current view of third-party risks that may come from changes in credit ratings, new lawsuits, significant layoffs, or other events that may impact their overall risk posture.
• Point-in-time monitoring allows you to assess risks periodically using questionnaires and examining such documents as SOC reports, information security policies, and financial statements.
• Risk reassessments are regularly performed as third-party relationships grow and evolve to evaluate what has changed and determine whether additional diligence or contract changes are needed.
• Structured third-party off-boarding is based on your exit strategy and helps ensure third-party contracts and relationships are risk-averse. It includes such activities as returning or destroying data, removing access to systems, confirming the completeness and accuracy of all deliverables, etc.

Third-Party Risk Management Lifecycle With Start

The third-party risk management lifecycle is the end-to-end approach companies use to manage third-party vendors organized and transparently. It starts before a contract is signed and continues until you determine it’s time to end the relationship. Creating suitable systems and controls throughout the lifecycle is crucial to identify and mitigate your risks with third parties effectively.

By working with Start, you can access a comprehensive third-party risk management platform that streamlines the entire risk management process through your vendor lifecycle. You can book a call today to speak with an expert and learn more about how Start can save you time and money.

The post Third-Party Risk Management Lifecycle: How To Map Out Each Step appeared first on Start.