60% of healthcare organizations say their third-party risk management (TPRM) program needs improvement, with a recent survey showing that vendor threats keep businesses from reaching their organization goals.
Third-Party Vulnerabilities and Risks
Most current data breaches are partially or fully attributable to third-party risks, resulting in expanding third-party risk profiles. Several factors can make vendors more vulnerable to third-party data breaches, including:
- Weak organizational security posture
- Applications with weak security controls
- Weak coding practices or lack of a Secure Software Development Lifecycle (SSDLC)
- Lack of accountability from the third-party vendor sub-contractors
- Lack of appropriate legal and contractual oversight, resulting in interruption of critical business services if a third-party vendor security event occurs
But how can leaders mitigate these risks without creating extra costs and complexity?
The NIST cybersecurity framework (CSF) provides a cohesive approach to unify and proactively improve your TPRM program. While the framework applies to organization-wide risks, it contains specific guidance for supply chain risk management – and this article explains why adopting it is crucial to finally getting vendor risk under control.
An Overview of the NIST CSF
The NIST CSF 2.0 is a set of voluntary cybersecurity guidelines and best practices created and maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). A few of its most important features include:
- Risk-Based Cybersecurity: The framework is designed to be adjusted to your organization’s specific cybersecurity environment, business needs, and risk tolerance.
- Maturity Level: The framework is built around “adoption tiers,” helping organizations assess their cybersecurity program’s maturity and work to gradually increase adherence to NIST guidelines.
- Key Functions: The framework uses six key functions to structure cybersecurity programs, which are govern, identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover.
Ultimately, this makes the framework both robust and flexible, allowing organizations of all sizes and levels of cybersecurity experience to improve their program. In fact, research has proven that healthcare organizations that use the NIST CSF have lower insurance liability.
4 Reasons Healthcare Leaders Need a Third-Party Risk Management Framework
Healthcare TPRM programs present a series of challenges for security teams, but the right third-party risk management program, created in alignement with the NIST CSF framework, helps you:
1. Provide Visibility
With the adoption of NIST CSF 2.0, organizations will create the necessary directives to manage third-party risk while providing clear roles and responsibilities for visibility and ownership across the organization.
The organization leadership will:
- Establish a strong governance program, including alignment with legal and compliance
- Align with executive leadership on goals of a TPRM program, including appropriate policies, contractual requirements, and cross-organizational mechanisms and processes
- Identify, inventory, and tier all the vendors that connect to the organization’s data center or have access to the organization’s data
- Act on assessment results in alignment with the organization’s governance directives
- Track and report on vendors’ security postures and contractual compliance
A framework provides the executive leadership with an incentive to adopt the appropriate directives. Leadership will have the ability to bring visibility and alignment of internal processes, tools, and people – a necessary requirement for a successful TPRM program.
2. Manage Complexity
Third-party risk management can be overwhelming for healthcare security teams. The average healthcare organization has over 1,300 vendors linked to its IT system, while estimates suggest that 98% of organizations are connected to at least one vendor that has experienced a recent breach. This creates a huge workload for understaffed teams that often have to move between multiple separate platforms – making TPRM a constant juggling act.
To simply complete their vendor risk assessments, security teams must:
- Communicate the need for an assessment to their entire vendor network
- Provide support to facilitate the assessments
- Chase slow respondents or vendors that don’t cooperate
- Collate and analyze the huge volume of assessments
A framework gives this process order and saves security teams the stress of constantly improvising. They can follow established processes, gain clarity over what is required during each phase of the TPRM process, and proactively improve their internal processes to make assessments easier to manage over time.
3. Increase Efficiency
Given the size and complexity of healthcare vendor networks, it is unsurprising that most security teams struggle to stay on top of evolving threats. Surveys show that 50% of security leaders feel unable to keep up with the growing volume of assessments, more than 40% are dissatisfied with their assessment turnarounds, and over 35% struggle to keep up with the changing risks and threats associated with vendors.
These issues are often exacerbated by a lack of clarity within security teams. Without fixed processes or centralized data platforms, time is often spent worrying about what to do – rather than doing it.
A framework helps to organize, prioritize, and direct action. The result is a more efficient, decisive approach to vendor risk that is less likely to overlook or fail to identify serious vulnerabilities – ultimately helping to protect your patients, reputation, and bottom line.
4. Enhance Collaboration
Third-party risk management involves a lot of different individuals, including the internal security team and stakeholders, as well as delegates from every vendor. This creates a complicated communication landscape, and information is often either lost or only partially shared – which creates gaps in the security program and delays every element of the process.
The right framework helps to combat this issue by providing a “shared language” and understanding of the process. All parties can communicate using the framework’s terminology, and each party’s responsibilities and requirements are clear.
But what exactly is the “right” framework?
Why the NIST CSF 2.0 is the Perfect Framework for TPRM
The NIST CSF 2.0 offers three key benefits that other frameworks lack:
1. Flexibility
Vendor networks vary greatly between organizations, as do risk tolerance levels and business objectives. As a result, many security “best practices” may either be irrelevant or unnecessary for your specific TPRM program.
The NIST CSF reflects this fact and offers a level of flexibility that other frameworks lack. It is built around guidelines and best practices that can be adapted to your needs and business goals – helping to build your own approach to vendor risk within a flexible but straightforward and easy to understand breakdown of outlined categories and desired outcomes.
2. Ease of Adoption
Budget, time, and resource limitations are a constant challenge for healthcare cybersecurity teams. Introducing a new cybersecurity framework – especially one that is voluntary – often appears to be an unnecessary expense. But the NIST CSF actually helps make your resources go further.
The framework works on a spectrum of adoption, allowing organizations to assess their existing program maturity and see exactly how it can be improved. As a result, using the NIST CSF leads to faster improvements, lets you recognize the most critical vendors and their associated risks, and helps to avert imminent threats.
3. Supply Chain Guidance
Vendor security is distinct from other forms of cybersecurity: rather than simply undertaking assessments and implementing remediation efforts, your team must work collaboratively with the vendor – which often makes the process much more complicated.
The NIST CSF 2.0 features extensive supply chain-specific guidance to overcome this problem. According to NIST, “the primary objective […] is to extend appropriate first-party cybersecurity risk management considerations to third parties, supply chains, and products and services an organization acquires, based on supplier criticality and risk assessment.”
Use the NIST CSF to Tackle Vendor Risk with Intraprise Health
Many organizations understand the NIST CSF’s value but find the process of introducing it daunting. While the framework is designed to be flexible and user-friendly, security teams often still require expert support to introduce it – and that is what Intraprise Health offers.
We offer cutting-edge technology and expert services designed to make adopting the NIST CSF easy. This includes everything from assessing your maturity level and determining an ideal path to adoption to providing the technical platform and services to help you assess your third-party vendors. You will gain extensive support to put the framework at the heart of your third-party risk management program.
Want to explore how it could help you combat vendor risk – before it’s too late?
