Threat and Vulnerability Response Platform Utilizes Proprietary Threat Intelligence to Rapidly Identify Third-party Gaps and Control Deficiencies that Increase an Organization’s Risk
ProcessUnity, the leading provider of comprehensive end-to-end third-party risk management (TPRM) and data solutions to leading enterprises, announced the launch of its Threat and Vulnerability Response platform. Providing a streamlined, closed-loop, four-step automated approach, Threat and Vulnerability Response assists TPRM teams in identifying critical vulnerabilities that are present in an organization’s extended third-party ecosystem and distributing findings and recommendations for remediation.
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“Our Threat and Vulnerability Response platform tackles this challenge head-on so TPRM teams can get in front of an active threat as quickly as a few hours from detection. This is a game-changing solution for our customers who need to be privy to potential threats to their ecosystem.”
The newly unveiled Threat and Vulnerability Response platform solves one of the most challenging aspects of TPRM—staying in front of emerging threats. Traditional approaches to managing critical threats take weeks or months and typically involve manual processes that are difficult to manage. Threat and Vulnerability Response streamlines work for TPRM teams, allowing them to assess their potential exposure in hours or days so they can focus on other key priorities without worrying about missing any emerging threats or vulnerabilities.
According to a recent study by Qualys, the number of vulnerabilities exposed in 2023 grew to more than 26,000 threats, with 570 deemed high-risk vulnerabilities. Increased cyber activity and understaffed risk teams make it challenging to monitor active cyber threats continuously, delaying responses to vulnerabilities and emerging threats. This challenge is only exacerbated by growing third- and Nth-party ecosystems and identifying which of these organizations need to be assessed. The assessment process is often manual and time-consuming, leaving teams with insufficient time to respond to threats promptly. Additionally, keeping stakeholders such as Board members and C-level executives informed of the organization’s progress as they determine their exposure is critical but difficult given slow reporting processes.
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The Threat and Vulnerability Response platform is built around a simple, 4-step closed-loop approach to managing emerging threats, embedded in the following core features:
- Identify – monitor and identify critical vulnerabilities: The ProcessUnity Threat Research Team monitors CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) and NIST’s National Vulnerability Database (NVD) catalogs. Threat intelligence conducted by the research team identifies emerging threats relevant to the organization and highlights indicators of compromise across third and fourth parties. An alert is issued within the ProcessUnity platform and sent directly to the customer’s email, providing key details necessary for customers to understand the nature and severity of the threat.
- Prioritize – determine which third parties should be assessed: The platform combines inherent risk assessments, Automated Risk Profiles, and demographic and technographic data filtered by the ProcessUnity Threat Research team to develop a narrowed list of third parties most likely to be susceptible to the threat.
- Assess – scope and bulk-assess affected third parties: Based on the specific details of each emerging threat, the Threat and Vulnerability Response platform issues targeted assessments to an optimized list of susceptible third parties, leveraging robust workflow automation to initiate the process, score the results, and ensure remediation steps are accurately followed if necessary.
- Report – distribute findings with a single click: Transparent summary reports can ease the anxiety and frustration felt by senior leaders during a critical crisis. These reports demonstrate assessment status, the effectiveness of the TPRM program, and the team’s efficiency.
“During a crisis, time is not your friend. This is especially true when an emerging threat like the recent CrowdStrike incident or a vulnerability like Log4j is exploited, and third-party risk management teams are left scrambling to figure out their exposure. The current processes are cumbersome, take weeks or months to complete, and don’t foster a lot of confidence from stakeholders,” said Gary Phipps, VP of Strategy for ProcessUnity. “Our Threat and Vulnerability Response platform tackles this challenge head-on so TPRM teams can get in front of an active threat as quickly as a few hours from detection. This is a game-changing solution for our customers who need to be privy to potential threats to their ecosystem.”
Phipps and ProcessUnity’s VP of Product Marketing, Scott West, discussed best practices for threat and vulnerability response in a recent webcast. Catch the full conversation in Third-Party Risk: Conducting Emergency Assessments After the CrowdStrike Incident.
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