NIST CSF and Third-Party Risk Management

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) introduced the Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) in 2014 in response to Executive Order (EO) 13636 for securing critical infrastructure. While many NIST guidelines were developed to secure U.S. federal government systems, data and/or critical infrastructure, the CSF is designed for any business or private organization that needs to assess its cybersecurity risks.

In February 2024, NIST released version 2.0. The new version includes several changes to address growing challenges related to third parties and cybersecurity supply chain risk management (C-SCRM).

Exigences pertinentes

  • Establish and monitor the organization’s cybersecurity risk management strategy, expectations, and policy
  • Use safeguards to prevent or reduce cybersecurity risk
  • Take action regarding a detected cybersecurity incident
  • Help determine the current cybersecurity risk to the organization
  • Find and analyze possible cybersecurity attacks and compromises
  • Restore assets and operations that were impacted by a cybersecurity incident

Addressing NIST CSF 2.0 Guidelines

The CSF provides a set of cybersecurity outcomes (arranged by Function, Category and Subcategory); examples of how those outcomes might be achieved (called Implementation Examples); and references to additional guidance on how to achieve those outcomes (known as Informative References). The table below reviews the Functions, Categories and Subcategories most relevant to third-party risk management and cybersecurity supply chain management and offers best practice guidance for addressing the guidelines.

Note: This is a summary table only and is not an exhaustive list of NIST Categories. For a full view of the NIST CSF, download the complete version. Work with your internal audit team and external auditors to determine the right Categories and Subcategories to focus on.

Function, Category & Subcategory

Meilleures pratiques

GOVERN (GV): The organization’s cybersecurity risk management strategy, expectations, and policy are established, communicated, and monitored

Gestion des risques liés à la cybersécurité dans la chaîne d'approvisionnement (GV.SC) : Les processus de gestion des risques liés à la cybersécurité de la chaîne d'approvisionnement sont identifiés, établis, gérés, contrôlés et améliorés par les parties prenantes de l'organisation.

GV.SC-01: A cybersecurity supply chain risk management program, strategy, objectives, policies, and processes are established and agreed to by organizational stakeholders.

GV.SC-02 : Les rôles et responsabilités en matière de cybersécurité des fournisseurs, des clients et des partenaires sont établis, communiqués et coordonnés en interne et en externe.

GV.SC-03 : La gestion des risques liés à la cybersécurité de la chaîne d'approvisionnement est intégrée dans les processus de gestion, d'évaluation et d'amélioration des risques liés à la cybersécurité et à l'entreprise.

Élaborer un programme complet de gestion des risques des tiers (TPRM) ou de gestion des risques de la chaîne d'approvisionnement en matière de cybersécurité (C-SCRM), en accord avec vos programmes plus larges de sécurité de l'information et de gouvernance, de gestion des risques de l'entreprise et de conformité.

Seek out experts to collaborate with your team on:

  • Définir et mettre en œuvre des processus et des solutions TPRM et C-SCRM
  • Sélection des questionnaires et des cadres d'évaluation des risques
  • Optimiser votre programme pour traiter l'ensemble du cycle de vie des risques liés aux tiers - du sourcing et de la diligence raisonnable à la résiliation et à l'abandon - en fonction de l'appétence au risque de votre organisation.

As part of this process, you should define:

GV.SC-04: Suppliers are known and prioritized by criticality

Centralize your third-party inventory in a software solution. Then, quantify inherent risks for all third parties. Criteria used to calculate inherent risk for third-party prioritization should include:

  • Type de contenu requis pour valider les contrôles
  • Criticité pour les performances et les opérations de l'entreprise
  • Le(s) lieu(x) et les considérations juridiques ou réglementaires qui s'y rapportent
  • Niveau de dépendance à l'égard des tiers
  • Expérience des processus opérationnels ou en contact avec les clients
  • Interaction avec les données protégées
  • Situation financière et santé
  • Réputation

À partir de cette évaluation du risque inhérent, votre équipe peut automatiquement classer les fournisseurs par niveau, fixer des niveaux appropriés de diligence supplémentaire et déterminer l'étendue des évaluations continues.

La logique de hiérarchisation basée sur des règles permet de classer les fournisseurs en fonction d'une série d'interactions de données, de considérations financières, réglementaires et de réputation.

GV.SC-05: Requirements to address cybersecurity risks in supply chains are established, prioritized, and integrated into contracts and other types of agreements with suppliers and other relevant third parties

Centralize the distribution, discussion, retention and review of vendor contracts to automate the contract lifecycle and ensure key clauses are enforced. Key capabilities should include:

  • Suivi centralisé de tous les contrats et de leurs attributs, tels que le type, les dates clés, la valeur, les rappels et le statut, avec des vues personnalisées basées sur les rôles.
  • Fonctionnalités de flux de travail (basées sur l'utilisateur ou le type de contrat) pour automatiser le cycle de vie de la gestion des contrats
  • Des rappels automatisés et des avis de retard pour rationaliser l'examen des contrats
  • Discussion centralisée des contrats et suivi des commentaires
  • Stockage des contrats et des documents avec des autorisations basées sur les rôles et des pistes d'audit de tous les accès
  • Suivi du contrôle des versions permettant de modifier les contrats et les documents hors ligne
  • Permissions basées sur les rôles qui permettent la répartition des tâches, l'accès aux contrats et l'accès à la lecture, à l'écriture et à la modification.

Grâce à cette capacité, vous pouvez vous assurer que des responsabilités claires et des clauses de droit à l'audit sont énoncées dans le contrat du fournisseur, et que les accords de niveau de service font l'objet d'un suivi et sont gérés en conséquence.

GV.SC-06: Planning and due diligence are performed to reduce risks before entering into formal supplier or other third-party relationships

Centralize and automate the distribution, comparison and management of requests for proposals (RFPs) and requests for information (RFIs) in a single solution that enables comparison on key attributes.

As all service providers are being centralized and reviewed, teams should create comprehensive vendor profiles that contain insight into a vendor’s demographic information, 4th-party technologies, ESG scores, recent business and reputational insights, data breach history, and recent financial performance.

Ce niveau de diligence raisonnable crée un contexte plus large pour la prise de décisions concernant la sélection des fournisseurs.

GV.SC-07: The risks posed by a supplier, their products and services, and other third parties are understood, recorded, prioritized, assessed, responded to, and monitored over the course of the relationship

Look for solutions that feature a large library of pre-built templates for third-party risk assessments. Assessments should be conducted at the time of onboarding, contract renewal, or at any required frequency (e.g., quarterly or annually) depending on material changes.

Assessments should be managed centrally and backed by workflow, task management and automated evidence review capabilities to ensure that your team has visibility into third-party risks throughout the relationship lifecycle.

Il est important qu'une solution TPRM comprenne des recommandations intégrées de remédiation basées sur les résultats de l'évaluation des risques afin de garantir que vos tiers traitent les risques de manière opportune et satisfaisante et qu'ils puissent fournir les preuves appropriées aux auditeurs.

As part of this process, continuously track and analyze external threats to third parties. Monitor the Internet and dark web for cyber threats and vulnerabilities, as well as public and private sources of reputational, sanctions and financial information.

All monitoring data should be correlated with assessment results and centralized in a unified risk register for each vendor, streamlining risk review, reporting, remediation and response initiatives.

Veillez à intégrer des données opérationnelles, financières et de réputation provenant de tiers afin d'étoffer les conclusions relatives à la cybercriminalité et de mesurer l'impact des incidents au fil du temps.

GV.SC-08: Relevant suppliers and other third parties are included in incident planning, response, and recovery activities

As part of your broader incident management strategy ensure that your third-party incident response program enables your team to rapidly identify, respond to, report on, and mitigate the impact of third-party vendor security incidents. Look for managed services where dedicated experts centrally manage your vendors; conduct proactive event risk assessments; score identified risks; correlate risks with continuous cyber monitoring intelligence; and issue remediation guidance. Managed services can greatly reduce the time required to identify vendors impacted by a cybersecurity incident and ensure that remediations are in place.

Key capabilities in a third-party incident response service should include:

  • Questionnaires de gestion des événements et des incidents mis à jour en permanence et personnalisables
  • Suivi en temps réel de l'état d'avancement du questionnaire
  • Des propriétaires de risques définis avec des rappels automatisés pour maintenir les enquêtes dans les délais.
  • Rapports proactifs sur les fournisseurs
  • Vues consolidées des évaluations des risques, des décomptes, des scores et des réponses signalées pour chaque fournisseur
  • Règles de flux de travail pour déclencher des plans d'action automatisés afin d'agir sur les risques en fonction de leur impact potentiel sur l'entreprise.
  • Modèles de rapports intégrés pour les parties prenantes internes et externes
  • Recommandations de remédiation intégrées pour réduire les risques
  • Cartographie des données et des relations pour identifier les relations entre votre organisation et les tierces, quatrièmes ou Nièmes parties afin de visualiser les chemins de l'information et de révéler les données à risque.

Pensez également à exploiter les bases de données qui contiennent plusieurs années d'historique des violations de données pour des milliers d'entreprises dans le monde - y compris les types et les quantités de données volées ; les questions de conformité et de réglementation ; et les notifications en temps réel des fournisseurs en cas de violation de données.

Forte de ces informations, votre équipe peut mieux comprendre la portée et l'impact de l'incident, les données concernées, l'impact sur les opérations du tiers et la date à laquelle les mesures correctives ont été prises, le tout en faisant appel à des experts.

GV.SC-09: Supply chain security practices are integrated into cybersecurity and enterprise risk management programs, and their performance is monitored throughout the technology product and service life cycle

Please see GV.SC-01 and GV.SC-02.

IDENTIFY (ID): The organization’s current cybersecurity risks are understood

Asset Management (ID.AM): Assets (e.g., data, hardware software, systems, facilities, services, people) that enable the organization to achieve business purposes are identified and managed consistent with their relative importance to organizational objectives and the organization’s risk strategy

ID.AM-03: Representations of the organization’s authorized network communication and internal and external network data flows are maintained

To address this Subcategory, Prevalent helps to identify fourth-party and Nth-party subcontracting relationships in your supplier ecosystem. The solution includes a questionnaire-based assessment of your suppliers and passive scanning of the supplier’s public-facing infrastructure. The resulting relationship map depicts extended dependencies and information flows that could expose your organization to risk.

ID.AM-04: Inventories of services provided by suppliers are maintained

Prevalent enables you to build a centralized service provider inventory by importing vendors via a spreadsheet template or through an API connection to an existing procurement solution. Teams throughout the enterprise can populate key supplier details with a centralized and customizable intake form and associated workflow tasks. This capability is available to everyone via email invitation, without requiring any training or solution expertise.

ID.AM-05: Assets are prioritized based on classification, criticality, resources, and impact on the mission

Please see GV.SC-04.

ID.AM-08: Systems, hardware, software, services, and data are managed throughout their life cycle

To address this Category, Prevalent enables you to:

  • Continuously assess and monitor the potential risks the service provider introduces into your environment; and make recommendations to mitigate the impact of those risks
  • Monitor service levels, key performance indicators (KPIs) and key risk indicators (KRIs) to ensure adherence to contractual agreements
  • Securely offboard service providers to ensure data and system security post-contract termination

Risk Assessment (ID.RA): The cybersecurity risk to the organization, assets, and individuals is understood by the organization

ID.RA-02: Cyber threat intelligence is received from information sharing forums and sources

ID.RA-03: Internal and external threats to the organization are identified and recorded

ID.RA-04: Potential impacts and likelihoods of threats exploiting vulnerabilities are identified and recorded

ID.RA-05: Threats, vulnerabilities, likelihoods, and impacts are used to understand inherent risk and inform risk response prioritization

ID.RA-06: Risk responses are chosen from the available options, prioritized, planned, tracked, and communicated

ID.RA-07: Changes and exceptions are managed, assessed for risk impact, recorded, and tracked

Prevalent Vendor Threat Monitor continuously tracks and analyzes external threats to third parties. As part of this, Prevalent monitors the Internet and dark web for cyber threats and vulnerabilities, as well as public and private sources of reputational, sanctions and financial information.

Les sources de surveillance comprennent

  • Forums criminels, pages en oignon, forums d'accès spécial sur le dark web, flux de menaces et sites de collage d'informations d'identification divulguées, ainsi que plusieurs communautés de sécurité, dépôts de code et bases de données de vulnérabilités.
  • Bases de données contenant plusieurs années d'historique des violations de données pour des milliers d'entreprises dans le monde entier

Toutes les données de surveillance sont mises en corrélation avec les résultats de l'évaluation et centralisées dans un registre des risques unifié pour chaque fournisseur, ce qui simplifie l'examen des risques, l'établissement de rapports et les initiatives de remédiation et de réponse.

Once all assessment and monitoring data is correlated into a central risk register, the Prevalent Platform applies risk scoring and prioritization according to a likelihood and impact model. This model frames risks into a matrix, so you can easily see the highest impact risks and can prioritize remediation efforts on those.

Vous pouvez ensuite désigner des responsables et suivre les risques et les mesures correctives jusqu'à un niveau acceptable pour l'entreprise.

Please also see GV.SC-04.

D.RA-09: The authenticity and integrity of hardware and software are assessed prior to acquisition and use

As part of the due diligence process, you can use Prevalent to require vendors to provide updated software bills of materials (SBOMs) for their software products. This will help you identify any potential vulnerabilities or licensing issues that may impact your organization’s security and compliance. SBOMs are treated as any other document type, and you can apply automated document profiles to search for extract key details important to validating software components.

ID.RA-10: Critical suppliers are assessed prior to acquisition

Please see GV.SC-06.

Improvement (ID.IM): Improvements to organizational cybersecurity risk management processes, procedures and activities are identified across all CSF Functions

ID.IM-02: Improvements are identified from security tests and exercises, including those done in coordination with suppliers and relevant third parties

ID.IM-04: Incident response plans and other cybersecurity plans that affect operations are established, communicated, maintained, and improved

Please see GV.SC-08.

DETECT (DE): Possible cybersecurity attacks and compromises are found and analyzed

Continuous Monitoring (DE.CM): Assets are monitored to find anomalies, indicators of compromise, and other potentially adverse events

DE.CM-06: External service provider activities and services are monitored to find potentially adverse events

Please see ID.RA

RESPOND (RS): Actions regarding a detected cybersecurity incident are taken

Incident Management (RS.MA): Responses to detected cybersecurity incidents are managed

RS.MA-01: The incident response plan is executed in coordination with relevant third parties once an incident is declared

Please see GV.SC-08.

Incident Response Reporting and Communication (RS.CO): Response activities are coordinated with internal and external stakeholders as required by laws, regulations, or policies

RS.CO-02: Internal and external stakeholders are notified of incidents

RS.CO-03: Information is shared with designated internal and external stakeholders

Please see GV.SC-08.

RECOVER (RC): Assets and operations affected by a cybersecurity incident are restored

Incident Recovery Communication (RC.CO): Restoration activities are coordinated with internal and external parties

RC.CO-03: Recovery activities and progress in restoring operational capabilities are communicated to designated internal and external stakeholders

Please see GV.SC-08.

Ressources complémentaires

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