ZenGRC

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ZenGRC Team

Follow the Data: 5 Strategies to Managing Third Party Risk

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For many organizations, managing third-party risk starts out as a relatively easy proposition because the company doesn’t have too many third-party relationships. As those companies mature, however, the endeavor soon becomes unwieldy.


With only a few third parties in your supply chain, you can use spreadsheets to identify and manage third-party risk. But as your organization grows and your needs become more complex, spreadsheets will lead to disorganization and chaos.
In this post, we share five strategies to manage your third-party risk.

How Are You Managing Third-Party Risk?

In a recent survey on vendor risk management, ZenGRC discovered that more than 40 percent of organizations tracked third-party risk with emails and spreadsheets; another 21 percent weren’t managing third-party risk at all. Only 14 percent used a GRC tool for managing third-party risk.


Managing third-party risk through documents, spreadsheets, and emails adds unnecessary complexity to the system and significantly increases the cost of third-party risk management.


Moreover, today’s organizations face many regulatory pressures for third-party management- everything from privacy and information security, to anti-corruption and health, safety, and labor standards. Organizations must be able to manage all these complexities (and more), across all their third parties.


Given those demands, businesses need a way to manage third-party vendor relationship risks. Documents, spreadsheets, and emails won’t pass muster. A robust third-party risk management (TPRM) program is essential.

What is a Third Party, Third-Party Risk, and Third-Party Risk Management?

The modern business landscape is an interconnected mesh of business relationships and dependencies. On average, more than half of an organization’s “insiders” are third parties, such as:

  • Vendors
  • Outsourcing firms
  • Suppliers
  • Service providers
  • Contractors
  • Consultants
  • Temporary workers
  • Brokers
  • Dealers
  • Agents
  • Intermediaries

These third parties introduce risks that can potentially harm the organization’s business continuity, financial position, and market reputation. These include:

  • Cybersecurity risk
  • Compliance risk
  • Legal risk
  • Financial risk
  • Strategic risk
  • Operational risk
  • Reputational risk

A third-party risk management (TPRM) program can help organizations understand, manage, and mitigate these risks. With TPRM, organizations can categorize their third parties and how they use them, perform due diligence, and document what safeguards these third parties have in place to minimize risk to the organization.


Companies with a large third-party ecosystem can simplify vendor management, create a safe information environment, and enforce a stronger cybersecurity stance.


As the regulatory environment evolves, businesses need an organized system of records to assure that audits provide the “who, what, where, when, and why” of compliance actions. TPRM provides such a system to streamline and achieve compliance.

Why Is Third-Party Risk Management Important?

Third parties are essential to your business since they enable you to achieve economies of scale, tap into expertise you may not have in-house, and save costs. Without TPRM, however, your organization remains vulnerable to the many risks these third parties bring. TPRM provides the required tools and processes for third-party risk assessment, prioritization, mitigation, and remediation.


TPRM is essential for any organization that maintains third-party relationships, and is especially critical in the post-pandemic environment. Covid-19 disrupted supply chains and affected businesses all over the world. In addition, cyber-attacks and data breaches have risen sharply since the pandemic hit.


Meanwhile, 54 percent of companies have suffered a data breach caused by a third party in the recent past. Companies that had a strong TPRM program were better able to cope with these new realities.

Essential Qualities of a Strong Third-Party Risk Management Program

To be effective, the third-party risk management strategy must account for organizations’ evolving needs, vendors, and processes. Creating a responsive strategy requires a lot of effort, a clear charter, and close collaboration among groups within the organization, including:

  • Procurement
  • Legal
  • Corporate compliance and ethics
  • Risk management
  • IT security
  • Senior management

Risk assessment is the key to solid TPRM. To evaluate third-party relationships appropriately, for both their value and their risks, you need to categorize the overall exposure of your organization to these relationships and to monitor changes. This must be done as part of the onboarding process for every third party and throughout the duration of the relationship.


As security practices change, vendors must respond quickly to ensure that they don’t increase the risk to the organization. It’s your responsibility to see that these relationships do not cross the risk boundaries you have identified and put in place.

10 Questions to Ask During Risk Evaluation

Here are 10 questions that every business should ask when evaluating risk:

  1. What is the scope of the third-party risk management program?
  2. Does the program only focus on IT security, or does it also include other third-party risks: international labor standards, health, safety, conflict minerals, and so forth?
  3. What are the program’s scope and focus?
  4. Who is our audience?
  5. Are there different types of third parties?
  6. How do we categorize our third parties? By geographic region and regulatory landscape? Could this create risk by geographic location?
  7. Do we categorize risk by the type of data and information that the third parties are accessing?
  8. Is the relationship a small one that affects just one office, or is a broad one that can reach the entire organization?
  9. What resources are needed to manage these third parties?
  10. How do we make things accessible to them?

To effectively address these aspects, a software as a service (SaaS) solution is ideal. SaaS GRC solutions organize the risk assessment question and answer process, enabling those on the ground to better manage and monitor the program while easing the broad oversight required in some industries, like financial services.

Third-Party Risk Profiling and Risk Assessment

Third-party risk assessments (or “risk profiling”) is the process of evaluating potential risks associated with working with third-party vendors, contractors, or suppliers. With this evaluation, you can accurately determine the level of risk posed by partnering with the third party and understand its impact on your organization’s reputation, finances, and operations.


The assessment process itself can be quite elaborate. You first have to gather and analyze data about the third party, including finding complete information on its financial stability, compliance history, and overall business practices.


Then you’ll use the information to assess the potential risks associated with working with those parties, and develop a risk management plan to mitigate those risks. This may include implementing additional controls, renegotiating contract terms, or conducting regular risk assessments.

Five Process-focused Strategies For Managing Third-Party Risk

  1. Engagement

    Third-party risk management depends upon the people who own the relationships. Vendors, contractors, and partners will be accessing your systems, reading your policies, and taking your assessments. You need a technology platform that supports this lifecycle – that engages with employees and third parties “where they are,” so to speak – to control the flow of information and assure that all your third parties meet your risk standards.

  2. Collaboration

    Team members from procurement, legal, contracting, corporate compliance and ethics, risk management, and audit should all be involved in managing third-party risk. To coordinate all these moving parts, you need a solution that shows both the minutiae and the big picture, and shows both of those perspectives to all parties involved in TPRM.

  3. Operationalization

    Any operational process involves specific tasks and notifications to control workflows and sustain the process over the long term. This approach works for managing third-party risk just as well. Here are three questions to help you operationalize TPRM:

    • How do we integrate third-party systems with other GRC systems?
    • How do we understand our third-party risks in the context of enterprise and operational risks?
    • How can we integrate our TPRM systems with our supplier systems or our procurement systems?

  4. Content and Intelligence

    Before hiring a third party to work with your organization, research it thoroughly. If someone will have access to your data or customer information, be sure that the person is trustworthy. Here are several questions to guide the vendor screening process:

    • Has the vendor received bad reviews or been featured in negative news? Does the vendor have issues that are publicly known?
    • How do the vendor’s finances look?
    • Can you look at the vendor’s Dun & Bradstreet data or other public resources to learn more about them?
    • Can you integrate this information with some security rating systems to see the overall scoring, and use this information to guide our decisions?

  5. Be Mobile


    Managing third-party risk isn’t a sedentary process. Wherever appropriate, physically visit third parties, use mobile devices and cameras to conduct inspections, gather evidence, and document information.


Process-Based Questions for Managing Third-Party Risk

Understanding the process-based strategies to manage third-party risk requires asking the right questions to get the right information. With this in mind, here are six questions that every organization must ask to manage and mitigate third party risk:

  1. Who owns this third-party relationship?
  2. Who needs to be notified when there are issues or when something needs to be addressed?
  3. What policies govern this relationship?
  4. Is there a vendor code of conduct? Does the vendor need to read a security policy, privacy policy, or other policies?
  5. Are there regulatory obligations that govern this relationship?
  6. Where in the organization does this relationship fit and intersect?

Should you Also use a Risk Management Framework?

A risk management framework isn’t necessary, but it can help enormously with the tasks of risk management. You need a focused strategy and supporting technology to show how third parties intersect with your risk areas to manage third-party risk successfully. Frameworks help you do that.

4 Tools-Focused Strategies to Facilitate Process-Based Strategies

Policies to manage third-party risk only work when they’re supported by the right processes and tools. Here are several characteristics of the right tools necessary for these processes.

  1. Facilitate Stakeholder Communication

    While collaboration is important, the most critical stakeholders often determine the most appropriate tools. Consider the primary business group that works with the third party. Assure that these people aren’t omitted from the process, which can harm TPRM adoption and ultimately weaken the organization’s risk posture.

  2. Meaningful Metrics Matter

    Key performance indicators (KPIs) assist with business decision-making. When looking at metrics, remember that the information must be meaningful. Find the right tools to provide appropriate measures that match your business processes and risk profile.

  3. Automate the Small Stuff

    Some interactions may have multiple stakeholders, so your TPRM tools must be flexible. The tools must also overcome information silos by automating these interactions.
    For example, if you have to follow up via email or dive into a shared network to find the most recent information, that’s not a good use of your time, and it’s not providing you with direct, actionable intelligence for third-party risk management. Automating workflows, task management, and revision control can eliminate unnecessary complexities.

  4. Find Risk Management Integrations

    Emails, Word documents, and spreadsheets lead to information sprawl, contamination, and loss. Integrating risk management means working not just with stakeholders, but also with reports and information.
    For example, in one organization, ZenGRC uncovered a risk to availability (part of the CIA information security triad). We mined an accounts receivable system to detect non-performance payments being made by vendors who missed their service level agreements (SLAs). If the vendors repeatedly had to pay credits for missing their SLA targets, it indicated a higher risk that they could not provide consistent and reliable service. This was a key metric we tracked to assure availability.
    Important information may be hidden within an area not directly connected to your third-party risk management. A secure risk information management program helps you document and manage these connections and relationships.

TPRM FAQs

  1. How long does it take to get a basic third-party risk management program up and running?

    It depends on the organization’s size, the number of third parties, and other factors. Some providers offer bespoke build-outs, but those take a lot of time to implement. We have seen implementations take six months to more than a year, while some newer providers have nimble SaaS solutions that can be rolled out within a month or two.

  2. How do you come up with a third-party risk score?

    You can wade into a lot of math here. We consider basic factors, such as the results of audits and SLA performance. We also look at specific attributes of the vendors themselves. For example, do the vendors have dedicated security professionals and security resources? We add all of that up and multiply weights for some factors.
    The on-site assessments are weighted a little higher because we are physically reviewing things. We turn that into a percentage score to compare different vendors.

  3. Where’s a good place to start to launch a third-party risk program?

    It always starts with collaboration among many groups, such as procurement, legal, compliance, and ethics. Form a committee of all the people who have an interest in third-party risk management. We always start by getting a handle on what exactly you’re trying to manage and figuring out what percentage of your business is handled by third parties. That will drive a lot of decisions about how robust the process and tools need to be.
    If you have only one or two vendors, things can probably be a little bit more informal. In contrast, when you have 1,200 vendors contributing to multiple aspects of your business, you’re going to need a much more robust tool and obviously much more robust processes.

Manage Third-Party Risks with ZenGRC

The ZenGRC Platform is an integrated cybersecurity risk management solution that provides actionable insights to help you identify, assess, and mitigate IT and cyber risk.


Not only does ZenGRC provide real-time risk monitoring to help you stay ahead of threats; it also automates risk scoring and workflows to save time. The fact that you can prioritize investments and make informed business decisions to optimize security is another advantage of implementing ZenGRC.


Schedule a demo to see where third parties create risk, understand how this risk is changing, and how to manage these risks and mitigate business exposure with ZenGRC.

What is a Vulnerability Management Program?

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There is no such thing as an ironclad cybersecurity system. Even the most well-designed programs are subject to technology shifts, system failures, and good old-fashioned human error. Unauthorized access, weak endpoint security, and outdated defenses are all potential threats that could be disastrous for your organization. This is why vulnerability management is a critical part of any cybersecurity program.

Vulnerability management is the cornerstone of all information security programs. Cybersecurity practitioners leverage vulnerability management programs to identify, classify, prioritize, remediate, and mitigate the vulnerabilities found in software and networks. By adding vulnerability management to your cybersecurity efforts, you decrease the likelihood that potential threats will go unnoticed.

The Vulnerability Management Program Examined

What’s the difference between vulnerability assessment and vulnerability management?

A vulnerability assessment is only one part of vulnerability management — a critical part of vulnerability management, to be sure; but only one part.

The assessment helps you to determine what vulnerabilities exist in your security system, so you can prioritize those that have the most potential for harm. This process is frequently automated, and while vulnerability scanners can sometimes create false positives, they are still a good way to achieve a clear picture of what vulnerabilities are threatening your system.

Penetration testing is another critical component of vulnerability management and is a key technique to prevent data breaches. Also called “pen testing” or “ethical hacking,” penetration testing is the practice of testing a computer system, network, or web application to find security vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit. The process involves gathering information about the target before the test, identifying possible entry points, attempting to break in (either virtually or for real) and reporting back the findings.

Assessments and pen testing are important pieces of your overall vulnerability management effort. They allow you to look critically at your current cybersecurity program and decide where improvements should be made. Common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) uncovered by scans and tests will give important information on how to address and remediate the detected vulnerability.

What are the elements of a vulnerability management program?

No two programs will be the same, but successful vulnerability management solutions often follow this outline:

  • Identify. Vulnerabilities lurk in the network, servers, operating systems, databases, applications, websites, and cloud. Identification is critical for an organization to know what vulnerabilities are a potential threat.
  • Classify. Once your vulnerabilities are detected, classify them into groups. The ability to classify vulnerabilities makes prioritization, remediation, and mitigation easier.
  • Prioritize. Rank your identified vulnerabilities by severity and prioritize actions. The criticality of a vulnerability should dictate how quickly it is remediated.
  • Remediate. Take action to fix the vulnerability by closing ports, patching software, or through a detailed process exception. Most organizations remediate vulnerabilities once the risk is understood and a priority is assigned.
  • Mitigate. Implement controls to prevent the same vulnerability or type of vulnerability from happening again. Examples of mitigating controls include threat intelligence feeds, entity behavior analytics, and intrusion detection with prevention. The ultimate goal is to reduce the attack surface of your systems.

Just because you are able to identify, classify, prioritize, remediate, and mitigate a vulnerability one time, that does not mean the process is complete. True protection comes from the continuous management of vulnerabilities.

How do you implement vulnerability management?

  • Customize your approach. Your vulnerability management system will not come with a standard one size fits all template. To succeed you’ll need to examine your system within the context of your particular industry. Vulnerabilities that are catastrophic to some companies may be less urgent to others, and it’s important to understand your organization’s needs before you begin.
  • Create your plan. Once your assessment is complete, decide what steps must be taken to protect your company’s data, as well as the metrics you’ll use to determine success or failure. Make sure you prioritize the vulnerabilities that have the greatest potential for breach (the most probable threats) as well as those that put your most critical data at risk (the most dangerous ones).
  • Find the support you need. Successful vulnerability management includes strong communication, a well-trained staff, and reliable security tools. Integrating vulnerability management throughout your company’s policies, procedures, and controls can help your security teams eliminate current risks and prevent new vulnerabilities in the future.

Controlling your system’s vulnerabilities can be difficult when you can’t see the big picture. To understand your full threat landscape, you need the ability to examine your organization as a whole and not just the sum of its parts.

ZenGRC is an integrated platform that provides real-time, continuous monitoring of your organization’s risk management efforts. Through automation and integration, ZenGRC allows for a complete view of your vulnerabilities, creating visibility and scalability throughout your entire company. Schedule a demo today and learn more about how ZenGRC can help you eliminate vulnerabilities and keep your company safe from hackers.

Risk Mitigation in Software Engineering

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Developing software while preserving its embedded security can feel like an impossible task. As you update your product, you’re potentially adding new vulnerabilities. So as part of the risk management process in software engineering, you need to work with cybersecurity professionals throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC) to create a mature security profile.

What Is Risk Management in Software Engineering?

Traditional risk management refers to identifying and preventing any risks faced by a company that could cause financial losses. In software engineering, risk management refers to any threats that could cause a project to fail before its completion.

A risk management plan, therefore, looks at the process of software development and the wide variety of risks that can occur before the software project is ready for its intended function. The details of the application will change frequently throughout the development process, and any issues that could threaten the outcome of the project should be cataloged as risks.

What Is the Purpose of Risk Management in Software Engineering?

New programs are untested and uncharted, which means they’re vulnerable to risk throughout the development process. At any given point hackers could access your work in progress, perhaps to steal your intellectual property or collect information for future attacks; or the project itself may suffer from insufficient funding or a lack of staff.

So it’s not enough to examine risks for the finished product. You must look carefully at what risks exist for the entire development period, start to finish.

What Are the Five Risk Management Processes? How Can They Be Applied to Software Engineering?

  1. Identify. A new software project can move in so many directions before completion that identifying every type of risk may seem daunting. It’s still crucial that you probe for all possible risks, and that you continue to look for new risk factors as the project moves forward.
  2. Analyze. Examine the likelihood of the identified risks, as well as the source of the risk and the level of loss that would be inflicted if the threat should occur. Be prepared for your initial analysis to change over time, as the development process will eliminate some threats while creating others.
  3. Evaluate. Here you determine what tactics can best minimize or eliminate each risk based on your previous analysis. This process will allow you to create a risk management strategy that can be adapted as your software development project moves forward.
  4. Treat. Once you’ve decided what preventative measures will work best for your project, put them into action. Like all of the steps in this process, the treatment step will shift and change as your project changes and encounters new risks.
  5. Monitor. A key part of software risk management is to monitor the potential risk throughout the lifecycle of the project. Your project manager should be involved in every step of the decision-making process and should be kept apprised of any new potential risks that may arise.

What’s the Difference Between Risk Management and Risk Mitigation in SDLC?

Risk mitigation is a part of risk management, and is one of several strategies you can use to prevent damage from risk. Mitigation specifically refers to reducing the effects of a risk once it has occurred. Mitigation recognizes that some risk is inevitable and seeks to prepare rather than prevent.

Risk mitigation in software development parallels the process used by traditional businesses. As outlined by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP), the Software Assurance Maturity Model (SAMM) focuses on assessing, formulating, and implements a software security strategy that integrates into the SDLC. Regardless of development methodology, you can follow a risk management process that allows you to protect your software throughout each stage of development.

How Does SAMM Approach Risk Mitigation?

OWASP embeds risk mitigation and response throughout the development cycle. Functionally, each group within the organization retains responsibility at different points in time. OWASP does this by breaking down software development into four basic business functions, each of which divides into three practices:

  1. The Governance Function

    Governance, as defined by OWASP, focuses on business outcomes and deliverables such as strategy, metrics, policy, compliance, education, and guidance.

    The Strategy & Metrics (SM) Practice

    The SM Practice creates measurable security goals to mitigate the business risks inherent in data events.

    The Policy and Compliance (PC) Practice

    The PC Practice establishes written standards that meet legal and regulatory requirements, including audits that provide the necessary assurance.

    The Education & Guidance (EG) Practice

    The EG Practice increases workforce access to information so that they can identify and mitigate security risks more effectively.

  2. The Construction Function

    Construction focuses on defining goals and creating software within projects. As such, you need to include the project management team as part of these steps.

    The Threat Assessment (TA) Practice

    As part of the TA Practice, you focus on risk identification and risk analysis. Not only will you look at the impact an attack may have, but you also look at the probability of occurrence.

    The Security Requirements (SR) Practice

    Initially, the SR Practice analyzes high-level security requirements based on how an organization intends to use the software. From here, it reviews new risks and how to mitigate them as the software matures. So you need to consider interactions with suppliers and adhere to audit standards as required in Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

    The Security Architecture (SA) Practice

    Rather than waiting to secure your software upon completion, the SA Practice builds in security by default. You want project teams to focus on explicitly designing software with security functionality in mind.

  3. The Verification Function

    Verification relates to continuously testing, reviewing, and evaluating software for new risks.

    The Design Review (DR) Practice

    The DR Practice assesses design and architecture to detect and address issues early in the process. The goal of DR is to locate security issues before they become costly.

    The Implementation Review (IR) Practice

    During the IR Practice, you review source code and configurations for security vulnerabilities. While in the early stages of development, an organization can use simple checklists. Mature software development companies often use automation to provide greater coverage.

    The Security Testing (ST) Practice

    The ST Practice focuses on reviewing security in the runtime environment, functionally looking at it as it will work after deployment. As such, this can include traditional penetration testing for high-level test cases or review for other misconfigurations.

  4. The Operations Function

    The Operations function relates to all activities that are part of the software’s release, such as shipping, deployment, hosting, and operation in the runtime environment.

    The Issue Management (IM) Practice

    The IM Practice creates processes for handling issues reports and operational incidents by assigning roles, organizing a formal incident response process, and tracking issues. Additionally, it requires communication between all stakeholders.

    The Environment Hardening (EH) Practice

    To protect the application, the HR Practice focuses on assuring that the underlying infrastructure maintains the software’s security posture rather than undermining it. To assure manageable deployment of security patches, you need to keep the development team’s information and find ways to review the operating environment.

    The Operations Enablement (OE) Practice

    The OE practice focuses on risk monitoring to assure that your project teams communicate risks to users and operators. As part of OE, you need to create documentation with details that users and operators need, and share those with each release.


Why Embedding Security Within Software Development Matters

As more companies seek to use Software-as-a-Service platforms to enable their businesses, they also recognize that vendors are one of the most significant data breach risks. Moreover, with the glut of SaaS platforms on the market, a SaaS vendor can stand above the competition if it makes security a primary differentiator.

Most SaaS platforms recognize this, and many may say they’re secure — but the vendor data environments remain murky. So you need a project manager who focuses on project risk management and mitigation to assure that you’re genuinely securing your product.

How ZenGRC Enables Risk Management During SDLC

The OWASP SAMM requires documentation from myriad stakeholders throughout the development cycle. This amount of data can’t be held on a shared drive or tracked in a spreadsheet. If you want scalability, you need an automated process for tracking and documenting your security reviews.

ZenGRC allows you to prioritize tasks so that everyone knows what to do and when to do it. With our workflow tagging, you can assign tasks to the individuals in your organization responsible for the activities involved in risk assessment, risk analysis, and risk mitigation. Finally, with our audit trail capabilities, you can document remediation activities to prove that you maintained data confidentiality, integrity, and availability as required by law.

For more information about how ZenGRC can streamline your GRC process, contact us for a demo today.

Password Management Risks: Protect Your Castle

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Love them or hate them, passwords have become part of everyday life – from logging into email accounts to signing up for classes, accessing corporate accounts for work, and much more. We all know strong passwords are an important part of cybersecurity, and that we should use passwords that are auto-generated or complex.


Many of us, however, fail at the task. CSO online generated a Password Hall of Shame for 2020, and (yet again) the most common passwords were “12345”, “password”, and “11111”. Not exactly difficult for cybercriminals to crack.


Phishing attacks, ransomware holdups, and brute force attacks on corporate IT systems are on the rise, so now may be a good time to review how you manage employee passwords and whether it’s time to switch to Single Sign-On (SSO). Let’s take a look at how you can help protect your sensitive information and proprietary data with a better password management policy.

Password Risk Management Comes in a Variety of Forms.

When you sign on to a computer system, the first line of cybersecurity defense is to authenticate that you are a user who has access to the system. There are three main means of identification or what computer people call authentication:

  • Login information: referred to as “something you know,” like your mother’s maiden name or the name of your high school.
  • A login object: also called “something you have,” such as a cellphone that can receive a text code.
  • Something of your own being: also called “something you are,” like a fingerprint or a retina scan.

Different ways of making authentication more difficult to crack include:

  • Two-factor authentication, which uses two of the above mentioned combined.
  • Multi-factor authentication, which uses all three ways of authentication; such as your user name and password, combined with a text code sent to your cell phone and your fingerprint.
  • Single sign-on (SSO) coordinates login to multiple applications with a single, strong authentication.
  • Centralized authentication, which is a lot like SSO, but requires a user who has logged into the first application to re-enter the password even though the credentials are the same.

When trying to determine the best option for your organization, consider the password management risk combined with the level of security you think you need to protect your assets from malware.

Why Password Management Risk Mitigation Starts With You

As your company matures, you will likely need to use more interconnected applications to continue to be competitive. From email to cloud storage to Software as a Service (SaaS) providers, your organization is linking and using a lot of different applications just to accomplish daily work. On a normal workday, employees are accessing many applications to get their jobs done. Each application is a potential risk to your business’ cybersecurity, especially if employees are using weak passwords or overly common passwords.

Develop a Strong Password Policy

It’s important to make sure employees understand why they need a strong password, and can’t just use their phone number or another simple password.
Employees may falsely assume that since the company’s IT systems are protected by cybersecurity software and a vigilant IT department, their own personal password isn’t important. Therefore, most likely, the first step in mitigating password security risks is to develop a strong password policy.

  • Establish clear password requirements, such as the use of uppercase and lowercase letters combined with numbers or special characters.
  • Crack down on password sharing and the sharing of user accounts. Let employees know what can happen if your organization falls victim to password cracking and sensitive user information is leaked onto the web.
  • Require unique passwords and passphrases for each user.
  • Share examples of poor passwords and encourage employees to devise strong, secure passwords.

You Don’t Have to Change the Passwords All the Time

It was previously assumed that frequent password changing increased password security and was an important security measure. As information technology has advanced, however, research has determined that frequent changing of passwords doesn’t increase security by much. So yes, corporate logins and email passwords should be changed periodically, but that period can be longer in duration than previously thought.

Make it Easy for Employees to Remember or Retrieve Passwords

If you require frequently changed complex passwords, it’s very likely employees will write them down and leave them in places that are not safe, such as a note on the bottom of the keyboard. (Or maybe they will share their own passwords with co-workers.) For the sake of everyone’s sanity, it’s best to incorporate a strong password manager software solution and be as patient and supportive as possible while employees are adopting this extra step in mitigating password security risks.

How SSO Helps Mitigate Password Security Risk

Single Sign-On creates a single set of login credentials that are used across multiple applications and platforms. Basically, your employees come up with one password and use that to access every application they need to do their jobs.


When an employee enters a password for the dominant application, the SSO protocol shares a web token, a piece of data created by your server that combines a key with your identification. That allows access to every application the employee needs to do his or her job. It’s sort of like a bunch of code that combines your house key with your driver’s license, and you need both to get into your house.


SSO makes your organization more secure by creating a single point of entry into your systems, a single place where password authentication takes place.


Think of your IT systems as a medieval castle with gates and doors and windows where the enemy (the cybercriminal) can enter. SSO is the digital equivalent of creating a moat around your castle, where the only access point is the protected drawbridge.


SSO helps control password security risks because it makes it more likely that employees will use strong passwords: they only have to remember one. By streamlining employee access and lowering their number of passwords, you are automatically making it easier for them to use a strong password.

How Centralized Authentication Mitigates Password Management Risk

Centralized authentication is often confused with SSO because both perform a similar function. Centralized authentication mitigates password management risk by consolidating login information shared across multiple applications. Unlike SSO, centralized authentication requires constant repetition of credentials.


With centralized authentication, employees have a single username and password that works across multiple applications. This means that, similar to SSO, they need to remember only a single password. With centralized authentication, however, they need to enter those credentials every time they open a new application.

What Security Risks Come with SSO

As evidenced by the OneLogin breach back in June, SSO comes with some risk: having just one entry point means that if that is compromised, a single hacker can overwhelm your system and cause widespread damage for instance by installing ransomware.


Centralized authentication comes with a similar risk. If someone gains access to the set of credentials, the attacker can access all applications linked to that set of identification.

How Two-Factor Authentication Mitigates Password Security Risks

Biometric authentication is getting more and more common. Even theme parks like Disney and Six Flags now incorporate a fingerprint with the use of multi-day passes. This fingerprint requirement is an example of multi-factor authentication, or “something you are.”


Two-factor authentication is rapidly becoming a necessary and common safety protocol. It requires a username and password, and a piece of additional information tied to either an object or their person.


Biometric authentication takes password management risk mitigation to the next level by requiring the use of information specific to the individual person, not just to something he or she owns. This can involve facial, fingerprint, or voice recognition.


Since you are requiring your employees to provide data that is genetically unique to each individual, this is the highest level of security you can provide your systems.

Despite the sci-fi concept, the reality is that current technology makes this more accessible. Apple’s iPhone and MacBook Pro editions use fingerprints to gain access to the data on the devices. As this kind of technology becomes more prevalent, the cost will go down.


Microsoft, for instance, is phasing out all password use and switching completely to biometric authentication within the next five years. Biometric authentication may not be cost-effective for businesses at present, but it’s likely to become a predominant security technology in the future.


Two-factor authentication aids in mitigating risk by recognizing when an employee’s login credentials are being used in a location or from a computer not normally associated with that employee.


This offers two layers of security:

  1. There is an additional obstacle your malicious intruder needs to overcome to access your systems.
  2. Your employee will be aware of an attempt at unauthorized login and can change his or her password prior to the completion of the intrusion.

For most organizations, this is the most efficient and cost effective way to protect your corporate access.

Why Multi-Factor Authentication May be the Future of Password Management Risk

Multi-factor authentication is the highest level of security an organization can invoke. In multi-factor authentication, an employee needs to have a password, object, and biometric code to login to your systems.


Protecting your systems from intrusion means creating a program that combines employee awareness with tools to protect yourselves. Determining the best way to mitigate password management risk means looking at the technologies available and understanding the ways in which they can be used within your organization.

The more complex your organizational structure, the more complex your access management needs to be.


To see how you can move beyond password management in protecting your organization from security risks, read our ebook, “Cut Through Compliance Complexity With Consolidated Objectives.”

Cybersecurity and Compliance Management Tools

As you secure a competitive spot for your business in our highly interdependent world, many tools can help keep your business stay competitive while keeping cybersecurity and compliance top priorities.


ZenGRC’s compliance, risk, and workflow management software is an intuitive, easy-to-understand platform that not only keeps track of your workflow, but also lets you find areas of high risk before those risks manifest as real threats.


Worry-free compliance management is the Zen way. For more information on how ZenGRC can enable your CMS, contact us for a demo.

Effective Workflow For Your Audit Management Process

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workflow for your audit management process

External and internal audits generate better insight into your data security, yet most employees flee from the process. Audits are cumbersome, time-consuming, and often feel peripheral to most people’s daily workload. 

Yet there are several benefits of internal auditing that make it a critical component to the long-term sustainability of your organization.

While it won’t make an internal audit for compliance management more fun, an effective workflow can streamline the audit process and create a rapid turnaround that saves you money and employee time. That’s what we’ll share with you today. 

What is Audit Management?

Audit management is a blend of your audit workflows executed systematically to conduct different audits for your organization. As your organization grows, auditing your activities can get increasingly complex. As a result, you must be able to organize time, effort, and resources for your audit activities to complete and remedial actions assigned promptly to the right owners. 

Most enterprise organizations today employ audit management solutions to organize their audit workflows to ease the burden on their workforce, depending on the type of audit – let’s understand what those types are.

Why is Audit Management Important?

In today’s business environment, audit management is a cornerstone for organizations. It ensures compliance, reduces risks, and optimizes operations. Here are some key reasons why audit management is important:

  1. Compliance Assurance: Audit management ensures adherence to regulatory requirements and industry standards. It streamlines compliance processes, reducing the risk of costly violations, which is especially vital in regulated sectors where non-compliance can have severe financial and reputational consequences.
  2. Risk Mitigation: Audit management identifies and mitigates risks through systematic assessment and monitoring. It provides real-time visibility into potential issues, enabling proactive measures to address weaknesses in processes and controls. This fosters a culture of continuous improvement and safeguards the organization’s assets and reputation.
  3. Operational Efficiency: Enhances operational efficiency by automating processes and offering real-time insights through dashboards. It minimizes manual efforts, optimizes resource allocation, and ensures cost savings and increased productivity, crucial for businesses in regulated and competitive environments.

Types of Audits

There are three types of audit activities, depending on the standards and regulations an organization is expected to comply with. These audits could be performed by internal audit functions or by external auditors, especially when it comes to certifying an organization against internally accepted standards like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).  

  1. Internal Audits (First-Party Audits): These audits are conducted internally to assess an organization’s adherence to its standards and policies, improving efficiency and internal controls.
  2. Supplier/Partner/Second-Party Audits: Organizations perform these audits on external parties to ensure compliance with agreed-upon standards and contractual obligations.
  3. Third-Party/Certification Audits: Independent auditors or certification bodies conduct these audits to certify an organization’s compliance with industry or international standards, enhancing credibility and trust with stakeholders.

We wrote in detail about each type of audit described above in our detailed description of different ISO audit types. Depending on the audit type your organization is expected to perform, there is an established internal audit process to follow, which might look like the steps described below. 

Overview: Internal audit processes

What are the 4 phases of an audit?

There are four phases of the internal audit are: 

  1. Preparation
  2. Performance
  3. Reporting
  4. Follow Up

These phases can be broken down into a series of smaller steps, which we’ll cover in the next section.

What is the audit process step by step?

The internal audit process consists of the four phases of an audit program, broken down into several stages. Each stage requires communication among all the relevant parties, including the auditor, senior management, IT department, and other relevant stakeholders.

Step 1: Planning

Creating an audit plan requires the internal auditor to set the scope and objectives, then establish an initial time frame. Additionally, the planning phase can include scheduling an initial meeting with your audit team or requesting documentation.

Step 2: Document Review

Next, your internal auditor will review policies, procedures, and established controls. The goal of document review is to assure that your written plans align with standards and regulations.

For example, if you need to be HIPAA compliant, you need to have role-based access rights as a security measure. If you haven’t established these as part of the written program, it isn’t compliant.

Step 3: Field Work

During this stage, the auditor comes to your place of business to see if your actions align with your written policies and procedures.

To follow the access rights example: your organization needs to follow your written policies. If an employee changes roles within your organization, you need to be adjusting the access rights appropriately.

Fieldwork also incorporates meeting with staff and engaging with the day-to-day business activities to assure appropriate compliance with standards, regulations, and organizational documents.

Step 4: Follow-Up

Your auditor will often find missing documentation or have follow-up questions before finishing a report. For example, if he or she were missing an access rights review report, the auditor would request it at this time.

 
If the auditor didn’t understand an employee’s answer when comparing it to the internal procedures, he or she might also request clarification. Most auditors will clear up confusion before submitting findings.

Step 5: Reporting

This is the stage most people dread. Once your auditor reviews all the information presented and completes the testing, the auditor will issue a draft report. The draft report incorporates audit results. 

This will include their independent evaluation of your program’s strength, a detailed listing of weaknesses, and recommendations for a corrective action plan.

The internal auditor will send you the draft report, allow you to review it, and give management time to respond to any findings. At this point, you might send additional documentation to remove findings before the auditor issues the final report. After all that back-and-forth happens, the auditor issues the final report.

Step 6: Issue Tracking

If your audit report issued findings, you need to track those audit findings, implement the proper internal controls to mitigate the issue, and prove you took corrective action with a written response.

For example, if you missed an access rights review, you need to show that you have an action plan in place to assure timely and accurate reviews. You will also need to pay close attention to any issues found in previous audits to assure corrective action is still in place for them.
Seems simple enough, right? So why do organizations struggle with making audits a priority?

 
There are several reasons. Chief among them include an audit’s time-consuming nature, which makes it a drain on resources. Let’s explore that, as well as some ways to overcome this challenge.

What makes the audit process time-consuming?

Whether you’re working with your internal auditors or an external audit committee, documentation and communication drive the audit process. Before the audit begins, your auditor requests documentation.

 
During the audit, your auditor needs to communicate with your staff. After the audit, your auditor needs a follow-up meeting with senior management to provide the audit report and discuss findings.

Scheduling meetings, finding responsible parties, and tracking documentation all take more time than you realize. If people have scheduling conflicts, then meetings get postponed. If responsible parties don’t respond to audit requests, the audit can’t begin.

Why does streamlining the audit process matter?

One word: money.
Whether you’re engaging an outside firm or using internal staff, you’re paying for the audit.

An external audit firm bills hourly. Therefore, time spent tracking down your employees costs you money. Moreover, the longer it takes employees to respond to requests, the more time your auditor needs to spend reviewing the reason for the request. Again, they’re going to bill you, increasing the overall audit cost.

If you have an internal audit department, communication lags still cost you money. Your internal audit department does more than mark checkboxes on lists. They also continually review the legal and compliance landscape for updates. If your audit department isn’t completing audits efficiently, then it can’t do all the work it needs to do. This drives up the cost of the audit itself.

Moreover, some regulatory requirements specify a period during which you must complete an audit. If your audit takes longer than expected, you may be noncompliant with the timing.

What Is An Audit Workflow?

An audit workflow is a structured methodology that guides and organizes the entire audit process within an organization. It involves a systematic sequence of steps, from planning and execution to documentation and reporting, to ensure compliance, risk management, and quality control.

Utilizing audit management software, these workflows become more intuitive and user-friendly, moving away from traditional spreadsheet-based methods. Cloud-based solutions like AuditBoard or OnSpring streamline the audit process, providing real-time notifications and an audit trail for diligent regulatory compliance.

These software solutions configure audit tools and modules, enabling teams to conduct audits efficiently and create workflows tailored to specific needs. They automate tasks, enhancing the internal audit management lifecycle and document control.

How creating an audit workflow eases communications

Creating audit workflows can enhance communications and shorten the audit’s length. Workflows allow you to assign roles and monitor progress through each stage of the audit process.

Once everyone involved has an assigned role, you can more easily communicate with one another to obtain documentation and keep the audit on track.

How automating audit workflows streamlines the process

Increasingly, organizations are using workflow automation tools to streamline communications and task management. The most time-consuming part of the audit process is connecting with your team and managing documentation sharing.

With a workflow management tool, you can delegate work to the responsible parties and track their progress. A powerful compliance dashboard will give you visibility into the work completed and what remains outstanding.

Emails often get lost in overflowing inboxes. Calendar alerts can be ignored. If a team member misses a deadline, you have to remember to send emails reminding that person. Automating these tasks with a workflow tool saves time by organizing the tracking for you.

What Is An Audit Management Tool?

An audit management tool is specialized software that orchestrates and optimizes the audit process within an organization. It is a centralized hub housing all audit-related information, schedules, and findings. These tools automate workflows, from planning and execution to documentation and reporting, reducing manual effort and enhancing accuracy.

These tools enable tailored audit processes by providing customizable templates and risk assessment functionalities. They streamline collaboration among audit teams, offer real-time updates, and generate comprehensive reports, fostering data-driven decision-making. Ultimately, audit management tools ensure regulatory compliance, operational efficiency, and standardized processes across various audit types.

How ZenGRC Enables Audit Workflows

The risk assessment process, including internal auditing, can put a huge strain on your organization. 

It requires both a time and monetary investment to assure a robust risk management program. While this can’t be avoided, the strain it puts on your organization can be eased with the right tools.

ZenGRC offers workflow tagging so that you can delegate your audit project tasks and monitor their progress and completion. Moreover, it allows you to prioritize tasks so that your key personnel know how to plan their audit work in the most efficient way possible.

ZenGRC’s workflow management capabilities include a centralized dashboard that continuously documents your control effectiveness making audit documentation and continuous monitoring easier.

Additionally, it helps you create an audit trail by documenting and remediation activities to support your responses to external auditor questions.

Furthermore, ZenGRC makes simple work of all your compliance auditing needs by centralizing all of your requirements. This helps to eliminate duplicate tasks by mapping controls to multiple frameworks and providing templates for a variety of different types of audits to help you work as efficiently as possible.

For more information on how ZenGRC’s audit management workflows can streamline your process, contact us for a demo.