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11/06/2026 11:47 pm
TL;DR: Manual vendor risk reviews can take days per supplier, and Zluri’s guide argues that third-party risk management software centralises assessment, monitoring, and remediation while reducing error-prone spreadsheet work. The real governance issue is that vendor review and offboarding still hinge on access, lifecycle, and accountability controls that many identity programmes do not operationalise cleanly.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: Top 10 Third Party Risk Management Software
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should teams govern third-party access when vendors connect to core systems?
A: Treat third-party access as an identity lifecycle problem, not just a procurement review.
Q: Why do vendor risk assessments fail when they stay manual?
A: Manual assessments fail because vendor state changes faster than spreadsheet-based review can keep up.
Q: What breaks when third-party offboarding does not revoke access?
A: The organisation ends up with residual identities, shared secrets, and integrations that still function after the supplier relationship should have ended.
Practitioner guidance
- Map every supplier to an owning identity process Classify which vendors have accounts, API keys, certificates, SSO trust, or delegated integrations, then assign each relationship to IAM, PAM, or NHI governance owners so accountability is explicit.
- Link vendor reassessment to contract and access changes Trigger review when a contract renews, a security questionnaire changes, or a supplier’s access scope expands, so reassessment reflects live exposure rather than annual paperwork.
- Make offboarding a technical revocation workflow Require every supplier exit to remove access, rotate shared secrets, disable trust relationships, and verify that residual integrations no longer work.
What's in the full article
Zluri's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Side-by-side comparisons of ten third-party risk management tools and the features each one emphasises
- Specific product functions such as automated questionnaires, reassessment workflows, and centralised vendor dashboards
- Named compliance checks and monitoring capabilities that help teams evaluate supplier posture in practice
- Vendor-by-vendor review notes that support shortlist decisions once the governance model is defined
👉 Read Zluri's guide to third-party risk management software options →
Third-party risk management software: what IAM teams miss?
Explore further
12/06/2026 8:37 am
Third-party risk management is now an access governance discipline, not a vendor questionnaire exercise. The article focuses on risk assessment software, but the underlying issue is whether third-party connectivity is governed as identity. Once suppliers can authenticate, integrate, or act on enterprise systems, procurement controls are no longer enough. The real governance boundary is the lifecycle of the access itself, which means IAM, PAM, and NHI teams have to own the operating model, not just the inventory.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 79% of organisations have experienced secrets leaks, with 77% of these incidents resulting in tangible damage, according to 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 security teams know whether vendor risk scoring is useful?
A: A vendor score is useful only if it changes a decision. Teams should check whether the score leads to approval, restriction, additional monitoring, or offboarding, and whether those actions happen quickly enough to matter. If the score only appears in reports, the programme is documenting risk rather than reducing it.
👉 Read our full editorial: Third-party risk management software and identity governance gaps
