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12/06/2026 9:02 pm
TL;DR: Vendor security and privacy assessment software helps IT procurement and security teams score third-party risk using questionnaires, audit evidence, certifications, and ongoing monitoring, according to Zluri. The real issue is not tooling availability but whether vendor governance is tied to access, data sharing, and continuous reassessment.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: Vendor Management 12 Vendor Security and Privacy Assessment Software for RFP issuers and responders
By the numbers:
- 92% of organisations expose NHIs to third parties, raising concerns about supply chain security.
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams assess third-party vendors without turning the process into paperwork?
A: They should anchor each assessment to actual access, data exposure, and privilege scope.
Q: Why do vendor assessments fail when they are only done at onboarding?
A: Because vendor risk is dynamic.
Q: What do organisations get wrong about security questionnaires?
A: They often treat questionnaire answers as proof of control effectiveness.
Practitioner guidance
- Link vendor review to entitlement scope Record which systems, datasets, and SaaS tenants each third party can reach, then require a fresh review whenever that scope changes.
- Require offboarding triggers for every vendor relationship Make access revocation, key expiry, and workflow shutdown mandatory steps at contract end, renewal failure, or role change.
- Separate compliance evidence from access approval Use audit reports and certifications as inputs, but do not let them replace a privilege review or data-sharing check.
What's in the full article
Zluri's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The vendor-by-vendor comparison table with individual feature descriptions and customer ratings.
- The specific compliance frameworks each tool claims to support, including the assessment and monitoring workflow details.
- The procurement-oriented differentiation points that help teams compare RFP response, evidence collection, and vendor risk workflows.
- The SaaS management and vendor onboarding context that sits behind the roundup structure.
👉 Read Zluri's vendor security and privacy assessment software roundup →
Vendor security assessments: what IAM teams need to fix?
Explore further
12/06/2026 10:51 pm
Vendor assessment is really identity governance in disguise. The article frames assessments as procurement support, but the operational issue is access, data handling, and privilege scope across external parties. That makes the problem closer to third-party identity governance than to document review. Practitioners should treat every vendor score as a proxy for entitlement risk, not a final answer.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 85% of organisations lack full visibility into third-party vendors connected via OAuth apps, according to The State of Non-Human Identity Security.
- 79% of organisations have experienced secrets leaks, with 77% of these incidents resulting in tangible damage.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who should own vendor offboarding when a supplier no longer needs access?
A: Accountability should sit with the team that approved the access, but enforcement must span procurement, security, and identity governance. Offboarding should include revoking credentials, closing integrations, and confirming data access has ended before the contract is considered complete.
👉 Read our full editorial: Vendor security assessments expose the real governance gap in SaaS
