Digital Transformation Gives Rise to New Vulnerabilities

Digital transformation is imperative for any business striving to deliver value to customers and remain relevant in fiercely competitive landscapes. Whether moving an existing infrastructure to a cloud platform or incorporating IoT devices and analytics into business models, these technologies enable organizations to increase efficiency, lower costs, and create new customer offerings that drive growth. While digital transformation allows companies to innovate, new vulnerabilities are formed, posing increased exposure to a business’s most essential commodity --- data!

Attacks on a company’s data are reaching epic proportions. Just pick up a newspaper or browse the latest social media sites and you’ll see that businesses big and small face high-profile data breaches. These events are making their way to executive boardrooms, with cybersecurity considerations increasingly playing a strategic role in business. As companies evaluate the ramifications a breach can have on their brand, reputation, and bottom line, IT security professionals are working at a rapid pace to discover the source of these attacks.

Besides the actual breach itself, what is the common theme among the following examples:

• Russian Hackers Reach U.S. Utility Control Rooms – Homeland Security Officials Say
• ‘Big Red Flag’: Automakers’ Trade Secrets Exposed in Data Leak
• Data Breach at Sears and Delta May Have Hit ‘Several Hundred Thousand’ Customers
• Target Hackers Broke in Via HVAC Company

In each event, the underlying theme centers around the fact that hackers infiltrated the networks of each organization’s key third party vendors to gain control of private employee data and critical infrastructure, including a company’s crown jewels, its Intellectual Property (IP).

As the number of third party vendors a company forms a business relationship with increases, so does the cyber risk. IT security professionals are taking a closer look at vendor risk management in their threat landscape, and in some companies, it has become the number 1 priority. Assessing vendors to understand what IT security and data privacy policies and procedures are being followed, along with continuous monitoring across both business and data risk, are critical components to managing third party risk. In this age of digital transformation, the need for proper due diligence has never been higher.

Prevalent helps companies manage third party risk. It is the industry’s only unified platform that integrates a powerful combination of automated risk-tiered assessments, continuous monitoring, and evidence sharing for collaboration between companies and their vendors. Prevalent’s actionable intelligence provides the most comprehensive view of vendor risk, creating maximum efficiency for all Third Party Risk Management programs.

To learn more, read Prevalent’s latest Briefing Paper, Best Practices for Reducing Third Party Risk.

Sara Muckstadt is a Product Marketing Manager at Prevalent, Inc.