Third-party risk management is one of the leading areas of compliance risk. Nearly two-thirds of senior compliance executives believe third parties present their greatest risk, regardless of industry, company size or compliance maturity.

In parallel, several significant and multifaceted challenges are emerging with U.S. and global privacy laws. These include the complexity of third-party ecosystems, evolving regulations and data privacy. While these are significant challenges, they are also opportunities to uncover blind spots in company programs.

Being proactive in corporate risk management is essential, especially with third parties. Often, vendors, suppliers and data brokers are being leveraged throughout an organization, so it is critical to bring third-party risk management (TPRM) processes and programs together, ensuring all are consistent and coordinated. To gauge the level of risk and uncover potential gaps, compliance and privacy leaders should collaborate to consider how often they are monitoring third parties, what intelligence they are gathering with and about their partners and vendors, and whether their risk management practices have been diminished due to cost and resource constraints.