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11/07/2026 8:28 pm
TL;DR: Vendor management policies are being pulled from a compliance document into an operational control as regulators scrutinise third-party risk, 60% of organisations reported at least one vendor-related incident last year, and third-party breaches now add almost $400,000 to average breach cost, according to Secureframe citing Gartner and IBM. The real issue is not policy presence but whether vendor oversight is enforced through lifecycle controls, continuous monitoring, and access removal.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Secureframe: How To Create a Vendor Management Policy + Template
By the numbers:
- 60% of organizations experienced at least one vendor-related incident in the past year.
- 69% of organizations feel they’ve been getting more scrutiny over the last 12 months by regulators and auditors.
- 96% of organizations store secrets outside of secrets managers in vulnerable locations including code, config files, and CI/CD tools.
Questions worth separating out
Q: What breaks when vendor management policies do not cover access removal?
A: When offboarding is not explicit, vendor credentials can survive the contract and continue to access systems, data, or automation paths long after the business need ends.
Q: Why do vendor relationships complicate IAM and NHI governance?
A: Vendor relationships often use delegated access, service accounts, tokens, and certificates rather than human logins, which means they sit outside standard employee joiner-mover-leaver processes.
Q: How do organisations know whether their vendor risk monitoring is working?
A: Vendor risk monitoring is working when changes in posture, access, or behaviour trigger action before the next scheduled review.
Practitioner guidance
- Define vendor access as an identity control Map every vendor class to the systems, data, and credentials it can touch, then require named owners and approval criteria before access is granted.
- Build offboarding into every vendor contract Require contractual language that triggers credential revocation, access review, and evidence of removal when the relationship ends or the service is no longer needed.
- Replace annual checks with continuous evidence Use control monitoring to track vendor posture changes, unresolved findings, and access drift throughout the relationship.
What's in the full article
Secureframe's full blog covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- A full vendor management policy template with sections you can adapt for procurement, legal, and security review.
- Detailed examples of what to include in assessments, management processes, and enforcement language.
- Suggested vendor risk controls for onboarding, monitoring, and offboarding across third-party relationships.
- Implementation guidance for using automation to support evidence collection and continuous monitoring.
👉 Read Secureframe's guide to creating a vendor management policy and template →
Vendor management policy gaps that security teams keep missing?
Explore further
11/07/2026 8:57 pm
Vendor risk is now an identity governance problem, not just a procurement problem. Third-party relationships increasingly depend on credentials, delegated access, and machine-to-machine trust, so the control question is no longer whether a vendor was approved but whether its access is still justified. That shifts ownership toward IAM, PAM, and security governance teams that can verify scope and lifecycle. Practitioners should treat vendor management policy as an access governance document, not a paperwork exercise.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable when a vendor compromise creates internal access risk?
A: Accountability sits with both the business owner of the integration and the identity team that approved the trust path. Procurement may own the contract, but IAM owns the access relationship. If the downstream system still trusts the supplier after compromise, the governance gap is in access design as much as in vendor oversight.
👉 Read our full editorial: Vendor management policy lessons for third-party risk governance
