yayabobiTPRM solutions provide the compliance standards, necessary direction, and procedures for third-party risk management. However, the activities of TPRM are far broader than the governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) solutions.
A proper TPRM solution has several useful features.
For example, its risk monitoring and exposure are easy-to-use and user-friendly. Additionally, it provides ongoing performance monitoring support, built-in-compliance features, progress tracking using quantitative information, self-service portals for supplying relevant documents, and more.
Industry assessments indicate that the average website today has more than 50 third-party applications running on it at any given time.
As in the SolarWinds attack without any TRPM solution in place, these systems can be contaminated with malware without noticing for a long time, exposing the sensitive data to hackers.
Therefore, occasional risk assessments are not adequate for the software systems of an organization. It is important to invest in a proper TRPM solution from the beginning of this software launch. To help you get started, this blog describes the top 10 TPRM solutions in 2022 (in no particular order) with their features, pros and cons, suitable user profile, and reviews from G2 and Capterra.
1. Venminder
Packed with features, Venminder enables complete risk assessments, identifies risky vendors, and supports continuous monitoring providing a high-level risk profile of third parties. Its questionnaire software feature enables users to automate question creation and create risk ratings, while the Oversight Management feature allows task creation, assignment, and status updates. Meanwhile, its Issue Management capability centralizes the issue management of the vendor, while Venminder's SLA Management enables the handling and monitoring of service level agreements.
Its pros include the intuitive UI, effective customer support, central storing of contracts, and easy access to documentation. However, it will be difficult to get started with Venminder if you have only a little knowledge of that software, and specific searches can be quite complicated. "Excellent customer support" is a recurring review.
2.BitSight
BitSight helps to reduce third-party software risks in many ways with vendor validation, which ensures new and existing vendors are meeting the required security controls. It also helps to reduce third-party risks by continuously monitoring security controls to meet organizational objectives, and offering evidence-based assurance so that stakeholders can move ahead with their chosen third-party software with confidence.
Pros include an intuitive interface, ease of use, great dashboards, and flexible reporting. However, some users have had issues with low accuracy in reporting and updating. Overall, it is considered a "very useful tool to quantify our current security strength and track improvement."
3. SecurityScorecard
SecurityScoreCard enables continuous monitoring of the full vendor exosystem. The IP scanning allows you to get a complete overview of the third-party software and identify changes that can impact the security posture. Its intuitive workflows support security questionnaires, collaborations with vendors, and document sharing. Furthermore, its rule-based tools enable fast responses to new threats. Simple dashboards of the SecurityScore card help you quickly identify the security stance across all the vendors.
SecurityScorecard pros include quick security posture evaluation, easy-to-use platform, easy setup, and excellent dashboard. The lack of user participation and taking a long time to correct the score after remediation is the major cons seen by its customers so far.
"An Excellent tool for vendor risk assessments," *is what users are saying. "It's nice to know that they always watch my critical vendors, and I can see how they are scoring. I also like that I can invite vendors to join SecurityScoreCard at no cost to them."*
4. ProcessUnity
Known as the number one in vendor risk management, ProcessUnity comes with a wide range of features: Vendor onboarding helps identify the potential risks of third parties, automating the vendor onboarding process. The Sourcing (RFx) features automate vendor evaluation for third-party risk management. Other notable features include risk scoring, classification, vendor issue management, and vendor risk management.
Its advantages include automated workflows, vendor onboarding, agreement tracking, helpful reporting capabilities, and the fact that it is a customizable platform. However, the workflows can sometimes be complex, and its lack of product support is another disadvantage.
Users from both small and large enterprises say that it "reduces the cost and time to produce effective reports."
5. UpGuard
UpGuard is another intuitive TPRM tool that allows you to assess your third-party software security posture. This easy-to-use platform groups risks into six categories: website risks, email security, network security, phishing & malware, reputation risk, and brand protection. Its pre-built questionnaire tools and the library help speed up the assessment process. Additionally, it provides risk dashboards that enable real-time tracking progress, letting you know exactly when vendors remediate issues.
Its pros include easy configuration and use, user-friendly UI, frequent updates, and good customer support. However, some customers complain that creating a fully-fledged risk assessment takes a considerable amount of time.
"Great platform with excellent customer service" stands out as the general consensus among users, who also report that it is "very easy to get started and quite powerful when you delve into the more advanced functions. The interface is intuitive and easy to navigate."
6. OneTrust
OneTrust allows users to easily create reports, track risks, and flag risks automatically. Its QRA and Vendor Portal enable security, privacy, and due diligence questionnaires with automatic answering. It also lets users build an answer library. The Third-Party Risk Exchange can be used for risk monitoring, analytics, and access to the global vendor community for information sharing.
There are several advantages of OneTrust. For starters, it consists of a clear and easy-to-use UI that simplifies the risk assessment with workflow automation, affordable pricing, and customization support. While its reporting capabilities are limited compared with other tools, and its support system needs improvement, users positively endorse it:
"Most comprehensive and versatile tool for security, governance, and privacy. The best aspect of OneTrust, a very layered aspect in itself, is its versatility. There are so many ways to apply the software solution in everyday activities and create a complex yet coherent and intuitive system for security and privacy governance, risk management, assessments, and everything a security professional would require."
7. Prevalent
Prevalent is another automated TPRM platform that simplifies and speeds up risk management, mitigation, and compliance. This SaaS platform enables continuous risk monitoring, remediation management, and automated risk assessment with workflows. The Prevalent platform provides access to risk reports of thousands of companies and also has contract onboarding, SLA mapping, relationship mapping, and SOC2 review features.
The pros of Prevalent include simple risk assessment, easy-to-navigate, easy onboarding process, and effective customer service. However, there are also things that consumers dislike, such as too much customization and dashboard customizations.
A G2 platform review states that it is a "Brilliant Risk Management Solution" *and that "Prevalent has delivered exactly what was promised and is very simple. The digital risk register and exports allow us to quickly navigate what's important, focus on the right areas, and report to the exec."*
top 10 TPRM solutions -- Prevalent
8. Black Kite
Black Kite presents unique, distinctive features compared to other platforms of its kind. For example, it uses the Open FAIR™ model to calculate the financial impact of third-party vendor software, and its third-party risk intelligence provides a holistic approach to security by combining three perspectives; technical, financial, and compliance. Meanwhile, its AI-powered compliance mapping tool enables users to measure compliance according to different standards like NIST and GDPR.
The pros of Black Kite include ease of use, low setup time, financial estimation for third-party risks, and the ability to pull data from multiple sources for analysis. Some of its cons include the lack of customer support, confusing UI, and issues in generating larger reports.
A review from Gartner peer insights says that it is a Great product for monitoring external cyber posture: "Black Kite has enabled us to monitor our external cyber posture. It is very quick to set up and yet very detailed and effective."
9. SAI360
SAI360 provides an integrated view of risks using its Integrated Risk Management (IRM) insights. Its features include a Vendor profiling portal for onboarding vendors, third-party risk screening, vendor risk assessment and surveys, automated due diligence, continuous monitoring, and risk intelligence reports with visualization capabilities.
While its workflow setup can be a tedious process for some customers, the pros of SAI360 seem to outweigh this drawback. They include great reporting capabilities, integration with cloud platforms, and a great UI -- which is all the rage amongst reviewers:
"SAI360 all the way! It is User-friendly! That is the best part! In addition, great dashboards -- Precise and usable reports can be produced."
Going beyond TPRM to truly protect websites from third-party risks
TPRM solutions are essential components to avoiding the cyber risks of third-party suppliers, and clearly, there is no shortage of them to choose from according to your unique business needs. If ease of use is your priority, SAI360 might be your tool. If your focus is on multifunctionality, ProcessUnity might be a better choice. But one thing all businesses need to consider is this: no matter what TPRM tool is right for them, it is likely not enough to protect their website alone.
TPRM risk assessments tend to be based on a rating system which identifies risks and categorizes third-party providers in light of those risks at the time of the assessment. But of course, risks evolve, and new risks constantly emerge, which means that a new approach to TPRM monitoring is in order. That's where Reflectiz comes in, proposing the continuous monitoring of third-party risks as a critical step for ensuring that any changes to the vendor, including new regulations, vulnerabilities, data breaches, product changes, and vendor organizational changes, have minimal impact on the business hiring those services.
With that in mind, going beyond TPRM is the safest bet. In parallel to establishing a TPRM practice, companies should also properly monitor critical third-party web applications used on their website to secure it. If you're wondering what this might mean for your specific business requirements, we invite you to book a demo with us.
