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06/06/2026 2:17 am
TL;DR: As organizations expand vendor and SaaS dependencies, third-party risk management is shifting from periodic assessments to continuous oversight, automation, and clearer ownership, according to SecurEnds. The governance lesson is that vendor risk becomes an identity and access problem as soon as external relationships carry privileged access and offboarding gaps.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by SecurEnds: third-party risk management best practices for vendor governance
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams govern vendor access across the third-party lifecycle?
A: Security teams should govern vendor access as a lifecycle, not a one-time approval.
Q: Why do third-party relationships complicate identity and access management?
A: Third-party relationships complicate IAM because they extend trust outside the direct employee population and often persist across applications, data stores, and API paths.
Q: What breaks when vendor offboarding is handled as a paperwork task?
A: When offboarding is treated as paperwork, access often survives the relationship.
Practitioner guidance
- Build a unified vendor inventory Record every third-party relationship, the systems it touches, the data it can reach, and the named owner responsible for review and renewal.
- Tie vendor classification to access scope Assign higher review frequency and stronger controls to vendors with privileged access, sensitive data exposure, or business-critical integrations.
- Make offboarding revoke access by default Require confirmed removal of API keys, tokens, certificates, and integrations before closing the vendor record or terminating the contract.
What's in the full article
SecurEnds' full guide covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- A step-by-step vendor inventory and scoring approach for organizations building a formal TPRM programme
- Practical examples of monitoring, mitigation, and reassessment workflows that turn policy into execution
- Industry-specific guidance for financial services, healthcare, SaaS, and government environments
- Implementation detail on how automation supports questionnaires, reporting, and continuous vendor oversight
👉 Read SecurEnds' guide to third-party risk management best practices →
Third-party risk management best practices: what IAM teams miss?
Explore further
06/06/2026 3:53 am
Third-party risk management is now identity governance by another name. Once a vendor can access systems, data, or APIs, the question stops being procurement oversight and becomes entitlement control. That is why TPRM programmes that do not connect vendor inventory to access scope miss the real control boundary. The practical conclusion is that vendor governance and identity governance should share the same operational spine.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Only 20% have formal processes for offboarding and revoking API keys, and even fewer have procedures for rotating them.
A question worth separating out:
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. If the programme only produces cleaner questionnaires but no faster remediation, it is not detecting live risk. Effective monitoring creates a current, decision-ready view of vendor exposure rather than a historical record.
👉 Read our full editorial: Third-party risk management best practices for vendor governance
