Today, ensuring the cybersecurity of a company has become a collective effort where all its partners and suppliers must pull their weight to overcome the cyber threat.
In a world where digital boundaries between different economic players are blurring, data flows every day, and collaborations with third parties are constantly increasing. In this context, the scope that a company must protect is no longer a solid and inert block but rather a dynamic flow extending in various directions simultaneously.
Ensuring the security of an information system that underpins its data and services is the critical challenge faced by the Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) of modern, extended companies.[1].
The digitalization and outsourcing of all or part of the production means, sales channels, and many other key functions for a company have profoundly changed the IT profile of organizations. It has evolved from a monolithic structure to an IT patchwork made up of pieces of local information systems, numerous cloud environments, shared systems, and other applications provided by third parties. This change means that key business processes now rely on environments that are more or less controlled by the company itself.
Every company must consider its digital ecosystem as part of its protection strategy. Each third party must be assessed according to its importance in the value chain, through three steps:
- Identify key business activities and the data they depend on
- Identify the third parties involved in its key activities or that hold its sensitive information
- Continuously and Proportionately Assess Its Third Parties
1.Identify key business activities and the data they depend on
The company must first be aware of the activities and data that are essential to its operations. A systematic asset inventory is crucial to ensure that the elements recognized as important are properly protected at all times.
2.Map its ecosystem
The company must know which third parties are involved in its key activities or hold its sensitive data. To achieve this, it is recommended to complement the business impact analysis with a map of interactions with partners and suppliers. This will help assess the potential impact if one of these third parties fails.
In fact, some key business processes may be outsourced to a third party, making the company dependent on that party’s reliability.
3.Continuously and proportionately assess its third parties
The company must have a precise understanding of the security level of each of its third parties at all times, so it knows when and where to implement mitigation measures to reduce the risks posed by a third-party failure.
For this approach to be economically viable, automation is essential. A continuous, proportional assessment based on real-time updated data should be implemented to best reflect the reality on the ground.
Traditionally, cyber risk has been assessed occasionally (at best once a year). This is no longer sufficient in an environment where threats evolve every day. The real challenge is to move toward dynamic, continuous evaluation, where every movement of the company’s ecosystem players is monitored and analyzed to anticipate potential attacks.
In conclusion, the security of businesses no longer depends solely on their own defenses but also on those of their partners. It’s the collective effort that must succeed! To achieve this, adopting a dynamic and collaborative approach is essential. This process must rely on suitable tools to address the challenge and ensure the protection of businesses in an ever-changing digital world.
