Introduction

January 17, 2022 | Author: Jasen Dill

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) a Global Pandemic forcing business enterprises to change their business operating model to overcome the hurdles and minimize the impact on their organization. One of the many hurdles that required the business’s attention and action was ensuring the viability of their Third-Party/Vendor ecosystem.

During these challenging times, it was not only organizations with a less-than-mature Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) program that struggled to respond to the pandemic. Even organizations with more robust TPRM processes had to scramble as the situation demanded them to expand, enhance, modify, and improve their existing TPRM program.


Key Challenges

As the pandemic raged on, organizations successfully worked out with their vendors on reduced Service Levels and invoice processing requirements as good-faith agreements between strategic partners. However, they faced the challenge of meeting their compliance obligations and the need for protecting and safeguarding sensitive information from increasing cyber-attacks/data breaches.


Key Lessons Learned

As we leap into 2021 and the pandemic continues to challenge all of us on multiple levels, there are opportunities for business enterprises to use “2020-hindsight” to review the changes made, evaluate those changes, and incorporate them into the new standard processes.

At Templar Shield, we have been supporting our clients on their third-party risk management program journey. Our unique TPRM managed services model provided us an opportunity to work closely with our clients, helping them overcome the challenges posed by the COVID pandemic. We observed that the companies that we’re able to pivot quickly benefitted. Here are some of the key lessons learned.

Changed Third-Party Risk Landscape:

Program Maturity is the Key:

Extended Program Coverage:

Third-Party Risk Management teams saw an increase in day-to-day responsibilities –

Revised Assessment Methodology/Approach:

Continuous Monitoring:

Extended Support/Co-Services Model:

This additional workload strained even the most seasoned organizations as companies scrambled for ways to pivot themselves to the “new norm.”


Conclusion

As we continue to maneuver through life, during a Pandemic or not, managing vendors will not become any less important ever.

What the pandemic has allowed us to do is apply the lessons we learned to mature third-party risk management programs and give our strategic partners the much-needed assistance to manage their third parties, keep data secure, and maintain regulatory compliance.


About Templar Shield 

Templar Shield is a premier information security, risk, and compliance technology professional services firm. We provide various service options to meet our client’s specific needs, including advisory, integrated risk transformation consulting, operations, and technical solutions. We have partnered with over 100 Fortune 1000 companies and government entities to implement innovative integrated risk and compliance solutions across organizations.


Our Third-Party Risk Management Services & Solutions

At Templar Shield, we provide end-to-end services and solutions to meet your unique third-party risk management requirements. Our seasoned TRPM domain specialists and technology consultants can help you with –

We leveraged years of rich experience gained from helping organizations build their TPRM programs and developed a unique TPRM managed services model allowing clients to choose from a selection of “a la carte services” to meet their program management requirements.

The TPRM managed services model allows you to spread the workload and segregate at any process step. This, in turn, allows you to focus on addressing bigger core issues and maturing the TPRM program.


About the Author 

Jasen is a seasoned GRC Consultant with cross-sector/industry and multi-domain expertise in providing consulting and advisory services. Jasen’s experience includes a diverse portfolio of innovative technology implementations and program transformations to support his clients’ strategic priorities. In this capacity, Jasen leads TPRM Program Managed Services and helps clients design, architect, and implement solutions to automate their TPRM programs, especially on tools such as RSA Archer, ServiceNow, Lockpath, IBM OpenPages, BlackKite, Rapid Rating, RiskRecon, and the like.

He can be reached at jasen.dill@templarshield.com.