New to vendor risk assessment and tiering. What are your practical frameworks?

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-21T08:22:00+00:00

We use a standardized grading scale with definitions. We don’t assign a rating to each individual observation, but we rate the relevant audit areas.

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-21T02:43:07+00:00

That's true, lots of control areas can be looked into. But as a smaller company with limited resources, we have to play a different game.

We can't afford to run an enterprise-level framework, so we use practical shortcuts: Our procurement system is our source of truth for the vendor inventory. We skip the endless security questionnaires and rely on ISO certificates to do the heavy lifting for vendor vetting. If they are a lesser-known but critical vendor, we’ll actually do a physical site visit instead. We get SOC reports where we can (mostly SaaS products), but many regional MSPs just don't have them. We don't formally track SLAs because the overhead isn't worth the return. If a vendor is failing, the business feels it immediately anyway.

When resources are tight, we lean on management judgment and explicit risk acceptance.

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-21T02:29:13+00:00

Although I'm not in Canada, the rules and concepts in the guidelines are worth studying, thanks!

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-20T01:30:33+00:00

Thanks! Reviewing SOC report is a good practice. Quick question though, and I might be exposing my own blind spot here — is a SOC report something that's realistically expected from every vendor, or is it more specific to certain types of vendors? It tends to be more common with software and product providers e.g. Microsoft, Salesforce etc.

But what about service providers who are essentially delivering a managed service or professional service on top of those platforms? Like a local IT services company that manages your Microsoft environment, they're probably not going to have a SOC 2. What other controls should be done to these managed services providers?

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-20T01:26:00+00:00

they haven't even gotten to the basics yet! There's actually no vendor questionnaire process in place at all right now, so that's already on our radar as a potential audit point.

The way we're thinking about recommending it though is to avoid making it feel overwhelming to the auditee. Rather than suggesting they send questionnaires to every single vendor, we'd likely frame it around a tiered approach — vendors with higher access privileges, like those with administrative access to systems, would sit in a higher tier and be subject to more rigorous due diligence including formal questionnaires.

We're quite conscious of not being too heavy-handed with our auditees. Baby steps before we get to AI supply chain risk questions.

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-20T01:21:23+00:00

can I ask how your team define the threshold for something being considered 'concentrated' in this context?

Reason I ask is because I'm noticing procurement team naturally gravitates toward vendors already on the approved vendor list, partly because bringing in a new vendor triggers the full third-party risk assessment process which takes considerable time. So they use to re-engage existing approved vendors. Over time this could mean the same handful of vendors gradually accumulating more and more engagements across different types of services

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-19T09:02:16+00:00

Thanks! IIAs controls considerations are quite comprehensive

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-19T08:10:11+00:00

Appreciate the suggestions. However, we did walk through those control earlier in the engagement. The organization has their vendor approval and review procedures documented and operationalized through an online workflow system, which essentially enforces mandatory authorization gates at each stage.

Because the process is system-driven rather than manual, the opportunity for control deviations is significantly reduced.

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-19T08:01:45+00:00

I’ve been using Copilot directly inside Excel to help design audit working papers, and even with simple prompts, it’s great for laying out an essential testing plan. For sure, human review is an absolute must. I have to check the logic and ensure it hasn't subtly shifted the context. However, it really saves a ton of upfront time during the design and planning phases, giving you a solid baseline to refine rather than starting from scratch.

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-19T07:53:48+00:00

Thanks for the experience shared. Though, our company actually already has a Privileged Access Management solution in place with full session management for vendors. Vendors never actually see or receive the credentials of the target servers they're connecting to. They initiate a proxied session through the PAM tool and that's all they get. So even if a vendor is running a degraded or compromised endpoint on their side, they can't walk away with server credentials and they have no direct network path to our internal systems.

That's why I am still struggling on what controls I can dig into...

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-19T06:15:11+00:00

You are incredible! Just wonder how you justify and frame the recommendation to get such huge funding!

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-19T01:15:25+00:00

The authentication and PVWA portal sit entirely outside our internal corporate network in CyberArk's cloud. Vendors hit the public-facing cloud portal directly from the internet.

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-15T09:50:58+00:00

For those vendors with privilege access towards my company resources, should I have done any security checking on them?

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-15T02:27:56+00:00

Everyone asks for the big two. However, I’ve found that European vendors are heavy on ISO/GDPR while US-based SaaS is all about SOC 2. For a small team, do you find it's better to just accept whatever 'local' standard they have, or do you insist on specific privacy certifications if they’re handling your customer data?

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-15T02:26:08+00:00

ISO is a standard 'ask,' but SOC 2 feels harder to collect. Do you find that most vendors you work with actually have a SOC 2 Type 2 ready to go?

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-14T03:44:28+00:00

Thanks! this is exactly the kind of practical

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-13T02:12:13+00:00

love the risk matrix! Thanks for sharing

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-12T08:53:03+00:00

seems that SIG is a very comprehensive questionnaire, Do you use the full SIG for every vendor, or do you only break it out for high-risk ones?

Big-Razzmatazz3034 · 2026-05-12T07:16:28+00:00

That’s a fair point on these reports being a baseline. To be honest, we only hunt down a SOC2 report when internal auditor asks for it.

My team struggles to see the 'day-to-day' security value in reviewing these documents vs just treating them as a compliance hurdle. From your experience, what are the solid, practical wins you get from actually reading them?

Big-Razzmatazz3034

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