Cyber risk rarely stops at the edge of your own organisation

Most organisations I work with rely on an increasingly complex network of suppliers, technology providers, consultants, cloud platforms and outsourced services.

Those relationships create real value, but they also create exposure.

Effective third-party risk management starts with good visibility. Structured assessments and regular reviews play an important role in helping organisations understand supplier controls, identify gaps and maintain a consistent evidence base.

The most important questions are practical:

• Which suppliers are genuinely critical to the business?

• What systems, data or services can they access?

• How quickly would we know if something had gone wrong?

• What would the operational impact be?

• Who would make the decisions if the supplier could no longer deliver?

• Could we move to an alternative provider safely and quickly?

The objective should be to apply proportionate scrutiny, focusing the greatest oversight on the suppliers whose failure would have the greatest impact.

Ask yourself:

Which third party could cause us the most disruption tomorrow, and how confident are we that the risk is being managed today?

Third-party risk management is not just a procurement exercise or a cyber security control. It is a fundamental part of business resilience.