TL;DR: 52.6% of Indian vendors experienced at least one third-party breach in the past year, according to SecurityScorecard, with IT services, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, and automotive manufacturing all exposed to supplier-driven risk that traditional audits miss. Static questionnaires are no longer enough when attackers target access chains, fourth parties, and connectivity rather than the vendor itself.
At a glance
What this is: SecurityScorecard says more than half of Indian vendors suffered at least one third-party breach in the past year, exposing a supplier-risk gap that static assessments miss.
Why it matters: For IAM, PAM, NHI and broader security teams, this matters because supplier access, credentials and connectivity now shape enterprise blast radius as much as internal controls do.
By the numbers:
- 52.6% of Indian vendors experienced at least one third-party breach in the past year.
- 26.7% of companies scored an F cybersecurity rating, the largest share seen in any dataset to date.
- 25.3% of companies scored an A cybersecurity rating, showing a highly polarized risk landscape.
- IT services accounted for 62% of all third-party breaches, reflecting their role as gateways to global clients.
Context
India’s supply chain exposure is not just a vendor management problem. It is a governance problem created by deep interdependence, where supplier connectivity, credentials and subcontractors can become the real attack surface.
For IAM, NHI and third-party access programmes, the key lesson is that breach risk often sits outside the primary organisation. A supplier can look operationally strong while still acting as a high-leverage access path into larger ecosystems.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when third-party access is treated as static?
A: Static treatment fails because supplier connectivity, permissions and dependencies change faster than annual reviews can capture. The result is a blind spot where credentials, tokens or support channels continue to function long after the original assurance has gone stale. Continuous visibility is required because the attack path is often the relationship itself, not a single system weakness.
Q: Why do supplier credentials increase breach impact in cloud environments?
A: Supplier credentials increase breach impact because they often sit on trusted integrations with enough permission to reach sensitive systems. If those credentials are reused, over-scoped, or not rotated, one compromise can affect multiple workloads. The risk rises when the access path is treated as operational convenience instead of controlled identity.
Q: How can teams tell whether third-party secret controls are actually working?
A: Look for evidence that every exposed or unused secret is being found, prioritised, and revoked quickly, and that partner access is removed when the relationship changes. If secrets remain active after their original purpose ends, the control is not working, even if scanning exists.
Q: What should organisations do when suppliers connect into critical systems?
A: They should apply stronger authentication, limit the access path, and monitor the relationship as an ongoing risk surface. Critical connectivity demands segmentation, explicit ownership and regular review of every non-human identity a supplier uses. Otherwise the supplier network becomes a hidden extension of the enterprise perimeter.
Technical breakdown
Why third-party access chains create hidden exposure
Third-party access chains become risky when a supplier’s permissions, integrations, and downstream dependencies are treated as static and trusted. In practice, that means one supplier account, token, certificate, or support connection can bridge multiple organisations and multiple control domains. Attackers prefer those paths because they compress effort while expanding reach. The weakness is not simply poor vendor hygiene. It is the assumption that periodic review captures a live, changing access graph. Once access is delegated across organisations, traditional audit evidence often lags the operational reality.
Practical implication: review supplier connectivity as an access graph, not as a document set.
Why ratings diverge so sharply across suppliers
The report’s A-to-F spread reflects a maturity gap, not a geography problem. Better-rated organisations tend to have stronger patching, endpoint coverage, identity controls, and remediation discipline, while weaker ones often rely on minimum compliance and fragmented tooling. That divergence matters because third-party exposure is amplified by inconsistency across the ecosystem. A single weak supplier can undermine the assurance gained from many stronger ones. For practitioners, this is a signal that supplier classification should move beyond annual questionnaires and into continuous risk stratification.
Practical implication: score suppliers by control maturity and remediation behaviour, not by self-attestation alone.
Identity controls are now a supply chain control surface
The article shows that attackers target credentials, permissions and connectivity because those assets convert supplier trust into direct access. That makes identity controls part of supply chain resilience, not just internal IAM hygiene. In this context, non-human identities such as API keys, integrations, support accounts and certificates become cross-organisational risk carriers. If those identities persist too long, are over-scoped, or are poorly inventoried, they increase the blast radius of any third-party compromise. Supplier risk therefore has to be governed through credential lifecycle, privilege scope and offboarding discipline, not only through security ratings.
Practical implication: extend NHI governance to third-party accounts, tokens and integrations.
Threat narrative
Attacker objective: Attackers aim to convert supplier trust into efficient access to larger enterprises, data sets or operational environments.
- Entry occurs through third-party exposure such as weak credentials, unpatched systems or other supplier-side access paths rather than direct targeting of the primary enterprise.
- Credential access or trust abuse follows when attackers use supplier permissions, connectivity or delegated access to reach downstream environments.
- Impact arrives when the compromised supplier relationship becomes a gateway into global client systems, data or operational workflows.
Breaches seen in the wild
- Salesloft OAuth token breach: hackers stole OAuth tokens to access Salesforce data via Salesloft.
- Klue OAuth Supply Chain Breach: OAuth tokens compromised in Klue integration breach affecting 700+ organisations via Salesforce data access chain.
Read and download The State of NHI & AI Agent Breach Report 2026, covering 200+ breaches impacting Non-Human Identities including AI Agents.
NHI Mgmt Group analysis
Third-party breach exposure is now an identity governance problem, not just a procurement problem. When supplier access, tokens and support channels are trusted by default, the control boundary has already shifted outside the owning organisation. Annual audits cannot keep pace with changes in delegated access or fourth-party dependency chains. Practitioners should treat supplier identity governance as part of enterprise attack surface management.
Continuous supplier visibility is the new baseline for resilience. The article shows why static questionnaires fail: they describe a point in time, while attacker paths exploit live connectivity and changing posture. Security teams need ongoing evidence of patching, identity controls and remediation behaviour across suppliers. The practitioner conclusion is clear: assess exposure as a continuous state, not a periodic filing.
Over-scoped non-human identities are a cross-organisational risk carrier. API keys, integrations, certificates and service accounts can move compromise from one company into many. If those identities are long-lived or poorly inventoried, the supplier becomes an access concentrator. The correct governance model is lifecycle control over third-party non-human identities, including inventory, scope reduction and revocation discipline.
India’s role as a gateway economy increases the need for ecosystem-level control design. The report’s message is not that India is uniquely weak, but that its centrality makes weak links more consequential. Multinational organisations should design controls for blast-radius reduction across vendors, subcontractors and connected services. The practitioner conclusion is to govern the ecosystem, not just the first-tier supplier.
From our research library:
- 92% of organisations expose NHIs to third parties, raising concerns about supply chain security, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Read next: SaaS-to-SaaS and OAuth App Governance Guide
What this signals
Supplier trust now behaves like an access-control decision. When external vendors can reach internal systems through credentials, tokens or integrations, the risk profile of third-party management starts to resemble IAM and NHI governance. Security teams should therefore measure supplier exposure by reachable access, not by contract status or questionnaire completion.
Fourth-party visibility is becoming a practical requirement. The article points to a governance gap where indirect dependencies can widen blast radius without appearing in first-tier reviews. Practitioners should extend supply-chain risk review to downstream subcontractors and connected services before those paths become incident routes.
Third-party NHI inventory is the missing control layer. Service accounts, API keys and certificates issued or used by suppliers can outlive the business relationship that created them. That is why offboarding discipline and privilege reduction must extend beyond the enterprise boundary into partner-managed identities.
For practitioners
- Map supplier access paths continuously Track accounts, integrations, support channels and certificates that connect suppliers into your environment, then classify them by privilege and business criticality.
- Treat third-party non-human identities as governed assets Inventory supplier-issued tokens, API keys and service accounts, assign owners and enforce expiry, rotation and revocation rules for each one.
- Replace annual assurance with continuous supplier scoring Use patching cadence, endpoint protection, identity controls and remediation performance as live indicators of vendor posture rather than questionnaire answers.
- Reduce blast radius across subcontractors and dependencies Require visibility into fourth parties and technology dependencies so hidden trust paths can be assessed before they are exploited.
- Prioritise MFA and segmented access for high-risk suppliers Apply stronger authentication and network segmentation to vendors whose connectivity can reach sensitive systems or large client populations.
Key takeaways
- India’s supplier ecosystem shows that third-party breach exposure is now a structural problem, not an edge case.
- The strongest evidence is the gap between periodic assurance and the reality of live access chains, delegated connectivity and fourth-party dependencies.
- The practical response is to govern supplier identities, visibility and blast radius continuously rather than relying on annual reviews.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 and MITRE ATT&CK address the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0 sets the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-03 — Vulnerable Third-Party NHI | Supplier access chains and third-party breaches are the article's central risk pattern. |
| NHI-05 — Overprivileged NHI | The article emphasizes supplier permissions and connectivity that widen enterprise blast radius. | |
| NHI-07 — Long-Lived Secrets | Supplier credentials and certificates can remain valid long enough to become breach conduits. | |
| Recommendation — Review third-party NHI trust paths and remove supplier access that is not explicitly required. Reduce third-party NHI scope to the minimum access needed for each business relationship. Shorten the lifetime of supplier secrets and revoke them as soon as the relationship changes. | ||
| MITRE ATT&CK | TA0006;TA0008 — Credential Access; Lateral Movement | The article describes attackers using supplier credentials and connectivity to move into client environments. |
| Recommendation — Map supplier compromise paths to TA0006 and TA0008 to prioritise detection and containment controls. | ||
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AA-05 — Access Permissions, Entitlements and Authorizations | Continuous entitlement review is directly relevant to third-party access governance. |
| Recommendation — Apply PR.AA-05 to continuously validate and reduce supplier entitlements. | ||
Key terms
- Third Party Risk: Third party risk is the chance that an outside organization, supplier, contractor, or service provider will create harm for your business. It includes security, privacy, operational, legal, and compliance exposure caused by access to data, systems, or processes. In identity terms, it often arises from shared credentials, integrations, and delegated trust.
- Fourth-party risk: Fourth-party risk is the exposure created by a vendor’s own vendors, sub-processors, and downstream service dependencies. It matters because direct contractual control usually stops at the first tier, while operational and data-risk propagation often continues much further through the chain.
- Non-Human Identity (NHI): A digital identity assigned to a non-human entity such as a software application, service account, API key, bot, machine, or AI agent that enables it to authenticate and interact with systems without direct human involvement. NHIs now outnumber human identities in most enterprises by 25 to 50 times.
- Supply Chain Resilience: Supply chain resilience is the ability to keep goods, services, and information flowing when a dependency fails. It depends on visibility, redundancy, recovery planning, and tested response paths rather than on cost optimisation alone.
Deepen your knowledge
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Published by the NHIMG editorial team on July 12, 2026.
Updated on October 13, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group, the independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org