What is a Risk Assessment Questionnaire?
A risk assessment questionnaire – also known as a third-party risk assessment questionnaire – is a tool that helps organizations identify potential vulnerabilities in the IT systems and practices of vendors and prospective vendors. Risk assessment questionnaires are completed by vendors themselves and provide a wealth of information that organizations can use to assess a vendor’s security posture.
The Future of the Risk Assessment Questionnaire
Risk assessment questionnaires have long been an important third-party cyber risk assessment tool. Designed to be completed by vendors themselves, questionnaires help risk managers identify potential vulnerabilities in the IT environments of vendors and partners that could result in a breach, as well as establish an understanding of the third party’s cybersecurity controls in place.
Questionnaires are typically completed yearly after onboarding. Consequently, they offer only a snapshot of a vendor’s cybersecurity posture. Yet, changes to a vendor’s security posture can happen at any time, so the risk posed by a single vendor is constantly shifting even if your assessment isn’t reporting it. Risk assessment questionnaires also rely on the vendor presenting accurate information on their performance, and not mis-representing their portfolio, whether purposefully or not. As organizations accelerate the pace of vendor onboarding, they require solutions that can verify the intelligence delivered by risk assessment questionnaires.
Bitsight can help. With solutions that deliver daily, external updates on a vendor’s security performance, Bitsight provides the tools for continuous monitoring that organizations need to bring vendors on board faster while achieving measurable risk reduction.
Improving The Risk Assessment Questionnaire
While risk assessment questionnaires may no longer provide the bulk of intelligence that fuels a third-party risk management program, they still offer significant value when they are well-structured.
Following several best practices for security risk assessments can help to ensure that your questionnaires remain a vital and effective part of your cyber security risk assessment checklist.
Customize your questionnaire
A one-size-fits-all approach to risk assessment questionnaires only makes your onboarding process more time-consuming and costly. Different vendors present different levels of risk. Questionnaires for service providers working with sensitive employee information should probably be much more robust than a risk assessment questionnaire for a food service provider, for example.
Don’t reinvent the wheel
There are many industry-standard security assessment methodologies you can use as the foundation for your questionnaires. The SANS Top 20 Critical Security Controls, the NIST Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity, and the Shared Assessments organization offer three of the most comprehensive cybersecurity models and methods and are a great source of ideas for creating your own questionnaires.
Use security ratings to tier your vendors
Grouping your vendors into tiers based on criticality of risk can ensure you focus the most resources on vendors that represent the greatest risk to your network if they’re exposed. Tools such as Bitsight Security Ratings can instantly identify which vendors pose a greater risk and need the most attention. Measuring vendor’s security rating against your own thresholds for acceptable risk can help to identify when vendors should be reassessed.
