Organizations trust third-party vendors to manage large volumes of sensitive customer data, with outsourcing increasing across all industries, including the highly-regulated healthcare sector and financial services. However, service providers don’t necessarily implement the same strict data security standards that these organizations do. Cyber attacks targeting third parties are increasing, according to Gartner.
Data leaks happen when sensitive data or personally identifiable information (PII) is accidentally exposed on the internet or dark web. Typically, data leaks only occur due to poor cyber hygiene, weak network security, or software misconfiguration that can lead to unintended data exposure. Without proper data leak detection processes, cybercriminals and hackers can exploit the exposed data without the organization’s knowledge using open-source intelligence (OSINT).
Many organizations have multi-cloud setups, with the average corporation employing services from at least five cloud providers. Compatibility problems, contract breaches, non-secured APIs, and misconfigurations are among the security hazards cloud computing brings, which is popular. SaaS configurations are an attractive target for cybercriminals because they store a large amount of sensitive data, such as payment card details and personal information.
Cyber vendor risk management (Cyber VRM) is the practice of identifying, assessing, and remediating cybersecurity risks specifically related to third-party vendors. By leveraging data from data leak detection, security ratings, and security questionnaires, organizations can better understand their third-party vendor’s security posture using Cyber VRM solutions.
Read also: Australia to toughen cybersecurity laws following a recent data breach, Meta cracks down on Russian disinformation, and more.
To understand this headline better we need to have a better understanding of the traditional ways we think about Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms and public cloud platforms. The difference lies in the starting point of these two solutions, while SaaS started as an extension of the corporate network, the public cloud started as an extension of the data center.
