IBM and Prevalent Build Cyber Resilience into Supplier Ecosystems

Third-party risk management is a growing board-level concern for many organizations. As a board member and cybersecurity advisor, I have seen firsthand that:

• Third-party and supply chain breaches have doubled in the last year, accounting for 55% of all security breaches now;
• 62% of supply chain attacks seek to exploit the trust of customers – especially in industries such as healthcare; and
• The average cost of a supply chain data breach is increasingly expensive, at $4.46 million including legal, remediation and recovery fees.

As attack surfaces continue to expand as a result of remote and hybrid work, and supply chains become more interconnected and multi-tier, regulators are also taking notice, applying additional scrutiny on organizations to improve third-party cyber risk governance.

Third-Party Risk Management Challenges

Between rising numbers of incidents, growing regulatory pressure, and increasing breach remediation costs, third-party cyber risk management should be the priority for IT security teams. For many organizations, however, what’s missing is a centralized approach to manage third parties efficiently. We see this approach manifesting in three distinct challenges:

• Incomplete inventory: A decentralized approach to third-party risk management inhibits an organization’s ability to take a complete inventory of its contracted third parties and suppliers.
• Inconsistent risk identification: A lack of resources results in untimely third-party supplier assessments and inconsistent risk assessment practices across the company.
• Poor communication: Manual processes inhibit teams in their efforts to understand and communicate the security and operational risks involved in third-party relationships throughout the organization.

Bottom line: Organizations lack the resources, processes and procedures to withstand third-party digital and physical disruptions. That has to change.

Building Cyber Resilience into Supplier Ecosystems

Jointly with IBM, we’re delivering a programmatic approach to third-party and supplier cyber risk management based on IBM’s world-class Security Services and Prevalent’s industry-leading TPRM platform. Together we combine expert consultancy to design and build a comprehensive solution with a robust TPRM methodology and model, a centralized and integrated view of your vendors to minimize compliance concerns, and real-time data to improve efficiencies.

The joint IBM-Prevalent solution can:

• Deliver a current state assessment of your third-party risk management function, identifying gaps against leading standards and frameworks
• Develop an operating model, organizational governance structure, policies and procedures, contract security requirements, inventory, and integrated dashboards for centralized supplier management across your enterprise
• Automate the end-to-end process of risk assessments with a platform to perform control-based assessments and continuous supplier monitoring
• Monitor and manage to a steady-state, providing proactive co-source or fully managed outsourcing of your supply chain risk management program

The result? Dimple Ahluwalia, VP & Global Managing Partner, IBM, says, “Supply chains are becoming increasingly more complex and organizations are facing mounting pressure to ensure suppliers at every level of their ecosystem are mitigating the risk of cyber-attacks. IBM Security Services, in conjunction with Prevalent, provide clients the framework, expertise and platform needed to build an optimized and scalable program.”

Next Step: Learn More by Registering for the Webinar

To learn more about this industry-first solution, I invite you to a webinar hosted by IBM and Prevalent, How to Make Supply Chain Cybersecurity a Competitive Advantage. During this on-demand webinar our teams jointly demonstrate:

• How to identify where your greatest third-party and supplier risk lies
• Governance models around strategy, new policies and procedures and change management
• Best practices to identify and mitigate identified third-party risks
• Technologies to drive efficiencies across the enterprise
• Metrics to determine whether your program is working

I’m thrilled to announce our joint solution with IBM! For more on our relationship, contact Prevalent and be sure to watch the webinar.