Organizations don’t get hacked. Their vendors do, and the organizations pay the price. Maman Ibrahim has spent 20 years at the intersection of cyber risk, audit, and AI governance. He has helped countless leaders see that third party risk is as much a leadership challenge as it is a security one. As founder of Ginkgo Resilience and principal partner at Gizmo Zonda, he has watched organizations invest millions in perimeter defenses while leaving vendor access dangerously exposed.
Today’s most underestimated threat often sits outside the firewall in the vendors, contractors, and partners with direct access to sensitive data and critical systems. Most organizations only realize this after a breach. Streamlining third party management to build resilience depends on three disciplines: creating real visibility into vendor ecosystems, automating risk assessment without giving up governance, and shifting from annual compliance checks to continuous monitoring.
Visibility Is the New Perimeter
Security teams cannot protect what they cannot see. Most organizations drastically underestimate how many third parties have access to sensitive data or infrastructure. The challenge is not only how many vendors exist but how little clarity there is around what each vendor can access, how deeply they are integrated into operations, and what the operational impact would be if they were compromised. “Most organizations underestimate just how many third parties have access to sensitive data or architecture,” Ibrahim emphasizes. “Start by building a dynamic inventory, not just a spreadsheet, a real risk tiered view of the ecosystem.”
Traditional spreadsheet based approaches are out of date almost as soon as they are created. New vendors are added, access permissions change, and integrations deepen. The result is that risk assessments rely on partial, inaccurate, or stale data. Ibrahim’s approach replaces static lists with dynamic inventory systems that provide real time, risk tiered views of the vendor ecosystem. When security teams know which vendors touch which systems and which data, they can focus monitoring, controls, and response on the areas that represent the greatest actual risk instead of guessing which vendors matter most.
Automate Without Abdicating Governance
Risk assessment must be consistent, intelligent, and scalable. Manual processes cannot keep up with the number of vendors most organizations rely on or the pace at which risk profiles change. Automation becomes essential, but only when it is grounded in a clear governance framework. “We have helped clients reduce onboarding friction while staying aligned with evolving regulations like DORA and NIS2,” Ibrahim notes. “The goal is not speed for its own sake, it is smart speed grounded in risk informed decision making.”
Many organizations deploy automation tools that accelerate vendor onboarding without materially improving their understanding of risk. Questionnaires are automated, responses are scored, and vendors are approved, yet no one stops to ask whether the questions reflect what truly matters or whether the scoring logic corresponds to real world exposure. In Ibrahim’s framework, automation and governance work together. Data collection, initial screening, and basic scoring are automated so that teams can handle scale. High risk or business critical vendors then trigger human oversight, deeper analysis, and challenge. Automation does the repetitive work while governance ensures that the most consequential decisions receive expert judgment.
Move From Compliance to Continuity
Third party security cannot be treated as an annual checklist. It requires continuous monitoring, early warning signals, and realistic crisis simulations that test whether vendor oversight holds up under pressure. “Third party security is not a once a year checklist. It is a living, breathing part of operational resilience,” Ibrahim explains. “Continuous monitoring, early warning signals, and simulated crisis scenarios can turn vendor oversight into a strategic differentiator.”
A compliance mindset treats third party risk management as something required by regulators. A continuity mindset treats it as essential to keeping the business running because disruption can originate from any vendor at any time. At Ginkgo, Ibrahim helps clients bring this continuity focused thinking into the boardroom. The conversation shifts from asking whether vendor assessments were completed to asking whether the organization would know, in near real time, if a critical vendor were facing a security incident that could affect operations or customers. That shift transforms vendor oversight from paperwork into an operational early warning system.
From Uncertainty to Resilience
After two decades helping organizations turn cybersecurity complexity into clarity, Ibrahim returns to the same conclusion. Streamlined third party management is not primarily about efficiency. It is about earning stakeholder trust, protecting continuity, and leading with confidence when pressure mounts.
Effective third party risk management reveals its value when things go wrong. Some organizations detect vendor breaches within hours. Others learn about them from their customers or from the media. The difference is rarely luck or budget. It is whether visibility, governance, and monitoring have been designed to function under stress. Vendors will be compromised. The real question is whether organizations will recognize it and respond before their customers bear the cost.
Connect with Maman Ibrahim on LinkedIn for insights on third-party risk management and operational resilience.
