Vendor security and privacy assessment software helps companies manage cybersecurity and privacy risk assessment processes when identifying, evaluating, and regularly reevaluating their vendors, service providers, and other third parties. The purpose of this software is to help companies understand the privacy and cybersecurity risks associated with doing business with specific prospective and existing third parties. Vendor security and privacy assessments often include reviewing and scoring a vendor’s cybersecurity policies, documentation, results of recent audits, certifications, and legal agreements on how sensitive or personally identifying data will be accessed, used, processed, or sold as defined by data privacy laws such as the GDPR or CCPA.
Vendor security and privacy assessment software assists two constituencies—both the company and the third party they do business with. Companies use this software to assess the cybersecurity and data privacy compliance of their third-party vendors, while vendors use this software to more easily reply to buyers’ questionnaires and publish their company’s cybersecurity and data privacy compliance information in a centralized, up-to-date, and referenceable exchange. This software allows vendors to use the same responses across multiple customer assessments, as well as proactively share information with customers, which saves the vendor time instead of manually editing individual spreadsheets or forms. On the customer side, vendor security and privacy assessment software is typically managed by information security teams. On the vendor side, sales teams typically use the software to distribute security and privacy compliance information to prospective customers. Vendor security and privacy assessment software often integrates with other software tools, including CRM software, governance, risk & compliance software , and cybersecurity services providers, such as ratings services providers.
Vendor security and privacy assessment software is for evaluating external parties and therefore is different from internal privacy or security risk assessment processes which utilize software such as privacy impact assessment (PIA) software or security risk analysis software. This software is also different from IT risk management software, which monitors risk of a company’s internal systems or data use. Vendor security and privacy assessment software is similar to, but narrower in scope than vendor management software and third party & supplier risk management software, which evaluates risk more broadly than security or privacy, such as financial fraud, corruption, or human rights violations.
To qualify for inclusion in the Vendor Security and Privacy Assessment category, a product must:
- Enable vendors to own, manage, and publish a company profile containing cybersecurity and data privacy compliance information and documentation
- Allow companies to assess vendor profiles in a centralized catalog, as well as by utilizing workflow to engage with vendors and request documentation such as security questionnaires, audits, certifications, etc.
- Provide customer-facing teams with workflow to easily share access to the company’s vendor profile, including the ability to link to the profile on a company website or in marketing materials
- Facilitate automated notifications, alerts, and reminders for specific actions including upcoming assessments, profile access requests, etc.
- Support standardized security and privacy framework questionnaire templates commonly requested by customers, such as CAIQ, SIG, NIST, VSA, GDPR, ISO 27001, Privacy Shield, etc.
