Why We Can’t Abandon Vendor Risk Assessments for Continuous Monitoring

Continuous monitoring has become a vital part of any robust third-party risk management program. The ability to get real-time visibility into the security posture of your vendors has proved immeasurably useful and powerful, and the technology is quickly taking hold in the cybersecurity industry.

However, its capabilities have led to the dangerous narrative that traditional vendor risk assessments are simply no longer needed. And as the industry becomes increasingly consumed with automating every possible workflow, it’s a notion that’s quickly taking hold and poised to lead many organizations down a misguided path.

While continuous monitoring represents one of the most important advancements to third-party risk assessment in recent history, it creates dangerous blind spots when used in isolation.

The Benefits of Continuous Monitoring

Today’s continuous monitoring tools provide capabilities that were unimaginable just a few years ago:

1. Real-time scanning of vendors’ internet-facing attack surfaces
2. Immediate alerts for expired TLS certificates and open cloud storage buckets
3. Detection of outdated software and exposed APIs
4. Monitoring for indicators of compromise and phishing domains
5. Tracking changes in public IP configurations

In safeguarding against these issues, continuous monitoring acts as an early-warning system, surfacing potential threats before they become full-blown incidents. And because it’s entirely automated, it reduces repetitive manual work and frees up teams to focus on higher-value analysis.

However, it’s not enough to become your entire TPRM strategy.

Why Continuous Monitoring Alone Isn’t Enough

Continuous monitoring tools have a fundamental limitation: they can only see what’s publicly visible. And in vendor risk management, what’s hidden often carries the greatest risk.

Among other factors, continuous monitoring can’t see how vendors train their employees. It doesn’t know what their disaster recovery protocols are. It certainly can’t tell you how they enforce their cybersecurity policies. 

As a result, continuous monitoring typically covers less than 60% of the risk areas you’d assess in standard questionnaires like a SIG Lite. And when it fails to account for the human element, which plays a role in 68% of breaches, this is more than a minor oversight.

You might detect a misconfigured server, but you’ll miss the fact that the vendor has no incident response plan or hasn’t tested their backup systems in years.

The Unique Aspects That Only Assessments Can Capture

Vendor risk assessments, when designed thoughtfully, provide insights that automation just can’t replicate. They reveal the maturity and reality of a vendor’s security program through detailed inquiry and evidence review.

Well-designed assessments go beyond surface-level checks to examine:

1. Security culture and training: How often is security training conducted? Is it tailored to different roles? Does it include practical exercises like phishing simulations?
2. Resilience planning: What happens when systems fail? Does the vendor have documented, tested plans for system outages or data center loss? How quickly can they recover critical services?
3. Governance and accountability: Who is responsible for security? How are policies enforced? What metrics are tracked and reported to leadership?
4. Incident response capabilities: How would the vendor detect, contain, and report a breach? What’s their average time to detection? Have they successfully managed incidents in the past?

These aspects can’t be measured through external scans or automated checks. They require detailed questioning, evidence review, and sometimes direct conversations with vendor security teams.

How Perimeter Combines Continuous Monitoring with Human-Led Assessments

We built Perimeter on the understanding that effective vendor risk management requires both automated monitoring and regular vendor assessments. Rather than seeing these as competing approaches, we’ve integrated them into a comprehensive solution.

Our approach combines:

1. Intelligent automation: Perimeter’s continuous monitoring runs in the background, providing real-time visibility into vendors’ external security posture. This automation handles high-volume, repetitive checks and flags anomalies like new vulnerabilities, expired certificates, or configuration changes as they emerge.
2. Human-led assessment: Our assessment framework goes beyond checkbox questions to uncover substance, not just confirm existence. We focus on how controls are implemented, enforced, and measured — revealing the real security maturity of your vendors.
3. Integrated risk analysis: We correlate findings from both monitoring and assessments to create a complete risk picture. When continuous monitoring flags an issue, we provide the context from assessments to help you understand its true significance. Similarly, when an assessment reveals a governance gap, we can show you how it manifests in the vendor’s external security posture.

This integrated approach gives you the best of both worlds: the real-time visibility of continuous monitoring and the depth of insight from well-designed assessments. Instead of replacing one with the other, we use each strategy where it’s most effective.

Beyond Checkbox Compliance: True Vendor Risk Management

Continuous monitoring has undoubtedly raised the bar in modern vendor risk management. But it hasn’t replaced the need for deep, thoughtful assessments, and it likely never will.

Technology can tell you what’s exposed, but only human-led inquiry can tell you how prepared a vendor truly is. The most effective risk management programs understand this distinction and build processes that leverage the strengths of both approaches.

Ready to stop flying blind with your vendor security? Discover how Perimeter’s integrated platform gives you complete visibility across your entire vendor ecosystem and dramatically reduces your third-party breach risk. Book a demo today to see how we can protect your operations from costly downtime.