Vendor Discovery: Automating identification of third party relationships

Introducing Automatic Vendor Discovery
Written by Amanda Ravanesi
Director Product Management

As organizations increasingly rely on external vendors and enterprise buying patterns continue to decentralize, the challenge of managing risk associated with third parties becomes critical. Unfortunately, even uncovering vendor relationships within an organization can be a struggle, with over 80% of workers admitting to using non-approved SaaS applications. This ‘Shadow IT’ is not only frustrating; it introduces tremendous risk.

Vendor Discovery, the latest capability in Bitsight’s Third-Party Risk Management solution, instantly identifies third-party relationships. It empowers risk and security teams to efficiently see both known and, more importantly, unknown vendor relationships. What used to take weeks of painstaking work can now be accomplished in just minutes.

 

Kickstart a Vendor Monitoring Program

One of the key benefits of Vendor Discovery from Bitsight is its ability to jumpstart vendor management programs. Traditionally, organizations have struggled with the time-consuming task of manually identifying vendor relationships. Tracked via spreadsheets that are populated after conference calls and emails, slacks and ad hoc templates, Vendor Discovery helps to instantly identify vendor relationships at the click of a button.

Leveraging Bitsight’s marketing-leading cyber risk data and unique correlation engine, this proactive approach to uncovering vendors shows relationships within your Continuous Monitoring dashboard. It provides details on the company and how it is connected to your organization. It is a simple and intuitive tool to accelerate creating a vendor management program or maturing one that already exists.

Constantly Monitoring an Evolving Vendor Ecosystem

Vendor relationships change, new partnerships form, and employees continue to discover new tools and solutions to help in their jobs. Vendor Discovery helps risk and security teams stay abreast of this evolving ecosystem. With the ability to differentiate between new and existing third-party relationships, Vendor Discovery provides ongoing visibility into an ever-changing vendor landscape.

Uncovering Hidden Risks

Reducing exposure across the organization starts with identifying sources of risk. The teams that excel in mitigating risk are those that are proactive in transforming hidden risk to known risk. When you can see, you can act.

Vendor Discovery is an incredible tool in the toolbox for security leaders to expedite this process. The ability to ‘click and see’ is not only efficient but powerful. This initial discovery helps to expedite other tasks, processes, and programs designed to remediate risk introduced from vendors. It becomes a cornerstone for discovery and a foundation for not only uncovering but mitigating hidden risk.

Learn more about how Bitsight Vendor Discovery can help enhance your third-party risk management program. Contact us today!

For more insight into managing hidden risk, download our guide titled “What’s Lurking in Your Environment? How Cyber Leaders Can Address Shadow IT & Hidden Risk”. It will arm you with policy and strategy suggestions to protect your expanding digital footprint and infrastructure.