Recently, BitSight and the Center for Financial Professionals (CeFPro) released a joint report that explores how financial services organizations are addressing challenges associated with third-party cyber risk management.
Based on a survey of financial services professionals from around the world, the “Third-Party Cyber Risk for Financial Services: Blind Spots, Emerging Issues & Best Practices” report, shows that third-party cyber risk management is critical to organizations.
However, financial services companies struggle with a lack of continuous security monitoring, consistent reporting, and other blind spots are creating challenges that could increase vulnerabilities to data breaches and other security incidents.
The expansion of the extended enterprise has reached a tipping point, fueled by cloud-based technology and outsourcing. In parallel, third-party data breaches are at an all-time high. In fact, Gartner estimates that by 2020, 75% of Fortune Global 500 companies will treat third-party risk management as a Board-level initiative to mitigate brand and reputation risk.
Current approaches to managing third-party cyber risk are helpful but only provide a brief snapshot. To proactively mitigate risk, organizations need automated tools that continuously measure and monitor the security performance of their third parties — such as security ratings.
Key findings from the "Third-Party Cyber Risk for Financial Services" report include:
- Third-party cyber risk is driving key business decisions.
- There is a lack of consistent third-party risk measurement and reporting.
- A majority of organizations aren’t using critical tools.
- Third-party risk management challenges and concerns for the future continue to grow.
.jpg)
