Why Cloud Works for Third-Party Risk Management

2 minute read

February 2016

by DEV

If you are running a Vendor Risk Management program, odds are that you either have:

  1. A lot of spreadsheets and a good attempt at a well-organized email filing system;
  2. A system in place that moves a lot of data inside and outside of your network; or,
  3. Outsourced most of the work to a consulting firm.

The technical issues of collaborating with all of your third parties to collect documentation, have them provide responses to inquiries, follow-up on incomplete or incorrect responses, or have a consulting firm work on your behalf is significant. If a single system of record cannot be leveraged, all of the risk calculations, response reviews, and reporting analysis becomes near impossible to obtain. Managing thousands of responses (example: the average assessment is 400 questions * 70 vendors = 28,000 answers to review!) via email or in systems that need to be merged is not tenable.

Cloud technology is actually a perfect fit for this solution for the following reasons:

  1. It sits outside your organizations firewall and network
  2. It allows all parties to submit information and collaborate in a secure, non-intrusive manner
  3. It eliminates the email storage problem and accelerates user response with instant analysis

Instead of moving data all over the place, a cloud solution creates a single location where third parties upload their responses and your analysis can be performed. This is a huge advantage for companies looking to streamline third-party interactions while continuing to maintain a strict network security policy. While the cloud has not been thought of for governance, risk and compliance related programs in the past; secure, flexible, and adaptable cloud solutions exist today that are allowing better performance at a lower cost.

Click here to learn more about Third-Party Risk Management in the cloud.

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About Us

ProcessUnity is the Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) company. Our software platforms and data services protect customers from cybersecurity threats, breaches, and outages that originate from their ever-growing ecosystem of business partners. By combining the world’s largest third-party risk data exchange, the leading TPRM workflow platform, and powerful artificial intelligence, ProcessUnity extends third-party risk, procurement, and cybersecurity teams so they can cover their entire vendor portfolio. With ProcessUnity, organizations of all sizes reduce assessment work while improving quality, securing intellectual property and customer data so business operations continue to operate uninterrupted.