By Saket Bajoria 

Enterprises are overwhelmingly opting to buy rather than build—and for good reason. It’s quicker and more efficient, enabling a business to streamline operations, drive growth, and scale swiftly while maintaining competitive pricing. This leads to a growing reliance on third-party technology, data, and services for strategic business initiatives, making third-party risk management (TPRM) a critical cybersecurity risk. But there’s a stark discrepancy in the evolving risks and how the risks are being managed.

About 69% of enterprises still manually manage their TPRM programs, and 57% of businesses rely on external Cybersecurity Risk Ratings to make critical TPRM decisions — even as experts point out significant operational challenges and question the reliability of these ratings.

The SAFE One approach to managing third-party risk through SAFE TPRM completely turns TPRM as you know it on its head and introduces a paradigm shift! SAFE TPRM is designed to enable a business to build, run, scale, and automate its TPRM strategy so that managing third-party risk is as seamless, efficient, and consistent as managing first-party risks.

Safe’s Unified Risk Management Platform For TPRM Challenges

SAFE TPRM is the industry’s first AI-powered third-party risk management solution, equipping businesses with the integrated benefits of outside-in analysis, questionnaire-based assessments, zero-trust, and inside-out scans. It uses a unique zero-trust approach to transform third-party risk management, empowering CISOs with real-time risk insights, automated assessments, and prioritized actions across all their third parties. Using SAFE One’s unified risk management platform, CISOs can finally get holistic, realistic, dynamic, and dollar-driven insights into their supply chain risk posture. They confidently answer critical questions about third-party risk, such as:

  • Which third parties are most likely to cause financial losses?
  • What is the cyber risk exposure of the business due to its supply chain?
  • How likely are various cyber risk scenarios through third parties?
  • …and more

How does SAFE transform TPRM?

SAFE TPRM attacks the biggest challenges CISOs struggle with by providing dynamic enterprise-wide cyber risk visibility, improved cybersecurity communication with stakeholders, and an ROI-driven method for operational risk prioritization & budget justification.

The unique value propositions of the SAFE TPRM approach include:

1. Risk-based Third-Party Risk Management
Leveraging SAFE One’s pioneering AI-powered approach of quantifying cyber risk, SAFE TPRM calculates the dollar risk and breach likelihood of different cyber risk scenarios that could impact an enterprise. This includes supply chain exposures that could lead to ransomware or DDoS attacks and even offers the ability to create custom or access out-of-the-box risk scenarios. This enables CISOs to tier their most critical vendors based on loss exposure instead of arbitrary values such as size or revenue (as has been the practice to date).

2. AI-Powered to Build and Scale your TPRM at Pace
SAFE TRPM automates the vast majority of third-party risk management. This includes automated LLM-powered ingestion of questionnaire inputs and compliance documents such as SOC, ISO, and NIST reports. Businesses are empowered to move away from siloed, manual, and point-in-time practices towards a unified, automated, and dynamic TPRM approach.

3. Prioritized Risk Management for Third and First Parties
SAFE One is the only solution that enables businesses to manage their third-party and first-party risks from a single platform. A significant obstacle in third-party risk management has been the inability to map vendor attack surfaces as accurately as one’s business. With SAFE One, this challenge is uprooted. SAFE TPRM continuously quantifies third-party risk using 100% automated controls telemetry data of outside-in, questionnaires, and inside-out scans. It contextualizes threat intelligence data to provide a complete picture of the most critical third-party risks, becoming the single source of truth for TPRM.

4. Zero-Trust First-Party Controls Evaluation
While most TPRM solutions focus on vendor controls, a huge gap exists in how the business’s native controls perform against known and emerging supply chain cybersecurity risks. Zero trust principles drive SAFE TPRM and provide real-time visibility into how well first-party controls are configured to minimize third-party breaches. This enables CISOs and TPRM leaders to redirect resources to enhance their native cybersecurity posture.

SAFE TPRM provides ROI-driven, prioritized insights to manage both third-party and first-party risks so that CISOs and TPRM leaders can tackle the most expensive and critical risks first.

5. Purpose-Built on Proven, Industry-Leading, Open Standards
In 2021, Forrester reported that Cybersecurity Risk Ratings (or Security Rating Services) are not ready for prime time. In their Q1 Wave for CRR vendors, Forrester mentioned that these services should not be confused as Cyber Risk Quantification solutions. This is because their methodology behind scoring still relies on a black box and unclear approach, rendering the scores unreliable and untrustable.

SAFE TPRM is the industry’s most transparent and defensible solution. It is built from the ground, leveraging the FAIRTM, FAIRTM-TAM, and FAIRTM-CAM standards, the international standards in cyber risk management. It also automatically maps third-party and first-party risks to the MITRETM ATT&CK for real-time attack surface visibility, yielding highly trustworthy outputs.

All this at a Reduced Total Cost of Ownership, Making TPRM Predictable and Scalable

SAFE TPRM’s unified approach reduces cost with software stack consolidation, and it facilitates budgetary planning by enabling businesses to increase third-party coverage at predictable costs and optimizing TPRM-related administrative costs.

Find out how SAFE TPRM stacks up against its contemporaries: BitSight and Security Scorecard

Automate, Unify, and Run TPRM at Scale
SAFE TPRM’s unique approach, built on the solid foundation of FAIR standards, marks a significant shift from conventional TPRM solutions. It offers a strategic, financially informed, and collaborative path to managing third-party risks. This makes SAFE TPRM not just a tool for risk management but a strategic partner in securing the extended enterprise.

Schedule a 1:1 demo today to start your re-imagined TPRM journey.