Shared Assessments 2021 Third Party Risk Management Toolkit launched

US member-driven third-party risk assurance specialist Shared Assessments has issued the 2021 Third Party Risk Management Toolkit to help organisations meet evolving regulatory compliance demands and address vendor risk.

The past year has brought unique risk challenges that have significantly shifted the focus of risk managers. Operational risks emerged with the pandemic, with major shifts to work from home security and service availability issues, vendor stability, and socioeconomic uncertainty.

The 2021 Toolkit responds to these challenges with expanded controls around resilience, privacy, data governance, data loss and remote risk. The tools have also been updated to allow more automation and collaboration among teams.

This new 2021 edition has been welcomed by risk management professionals.

“The Shared Assessments Toolkit is foundational in the area of third party risk,” said Ron Bradley, director, cybersecurity risk management, Trane Technologies.

“Third party risk managers rely on tools such as the Standardised Information Gathering and Standardised Control Assessment tools to gather, assess, and verify controls with ease and efficiency.”

The toolkit was developed based on the experience of over 300 member organisations and the thousands of organisations they serve to develop and maintain comprehensive tools for third party risk management.

“2020 has a been a monumental year for risk managers: increased instability of the critical vendors has only emphasised the strategic importance of a mature third-party risk programme,” said The Santa Fe Group CEO David Perez.

“The toolkit incorporates these risks and others identified by our membership. These tools along with our suite of best practices are essential to helping organisations build programme assurance.”

New this year, the 2021 Toolkit is accompanied by workshops to help members and subscribers optimise its value.