Third-Party Monitoring

What is third-party monitoring?

In the field of cybersecurity, third-party monitoring is the practice of gathering and analyzing data on the security posture of vendors within an organization’s supply chain. By monitoring the security performance of third parties, organizations can better defend against cyber threats that originate in a vendor’s IT ecosystem.

What are third-party breaches?

A third-party breach occurs when attackers access a company’s IT systems by using credentials or sensitive information stolen from a vendor within the company’s supply chain.

What is dark web monitoring?

Dark web monitoring is the process of tracking activity, conversations, and transactions on sites on the dark web. This is where cybercriminals tend to congregate online as they plan attacks, share information, and buy and sell the tools of their trade. By surreptitiously monitoring and automatically extracting data from hundreds of thousands of sites, dark web monitoring solutions provide security teams with early warning of imminent threats and a better understanding of the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) threat actors may use in their attacks.

Understanding third-party risk management

Third-party risk management has become an essential component of security risk management. In recent years, many of the largest cybersecurity breaches originated not as an attack on the company itself, but on third-party vendors. By exploiting weaknesses in a vendor’s security controls, attackers can often gain access to credentials that enable them to easily access the IT environment of the target company to steal money and sensitive information, cause disruption, or damage the business.

Third-party risk management enables businesses to better understand the security posture of the vendors in their supply chain. By using third-party intelligence that highlights the security gaps and exploitable vulnerabilities in vendors' software, organizations can configure their own security controls more effectively, and help vendors identify and remediate threats more successfully.

Sources on the deep and dark web can provide a wealth of intelligence for supply chain monitoring initiatives. The dark web is where threat actors discuss methods, plan attacks and buy and sell tools and data. Cyber security monitoring of dark web forums, illicit marketplaces, and code repositories can provide security teams with automated alerts and in-depth understanding of the threats facing the company’s vendors.

For security teams looking to improve their third-party risk management program, Bitsight offers a third-party intelligence platform with the broadest intelligence collection capabilities in the industry.

Monitoring the dark web for third-party threats

The most effective techniques for mitigating supply-chain threats involve three essential activities.

Improving security hygiene

Enforcing strong password policies and ensuring that users change their passwords regularly can help to prevent attacks that start with third-party vendors.

Validating SaaS application security

By regularly testing both sanctioned SaaS applications and the unsanctioned SaaS programs that employees rely on, you can ensure that these third-party apps are secure.

Preempting attacks with dark web monitoring 

The dark web is where cyber criminals go to discuss plans, learn techniques, and buy the tools and data they need to carry out attacks. With a third-party intelligence solution, security teams can uncover the earliest indications of risk and preempt attacks. Dark web monitoring enables teams to identify threats at the earliest stages, extracting intelligence they can use to configure firewalls and trigger playbooks to recognize and block specific attacks.

Third-party monitoring with Bitsight

Bitsight's fully automated threat intelligence solution helps organizations fight cybercrime, detect phishing, prevent fraud, enhance online brand protection, and improve governance, risk and compliance efforts. Our timely and comprehensive cyber threat intelligence offerings provide early warning when your organization is targeted or when your systems are compromised. By discovering threats and breaches earlier, you can take swift action to mitigate attacks before they impact your business.

To protect your organization against third-party risk, we actively monitor activities across numerous channels and forums in the deep, dark, and clear web to identify attacks in the making. As a third-party monitoring solution, Bitsight can uncover the earliest indications of risk and threats targeting any vendor in your supply chain. Our solutions enable your security teams to share with vendors vital intelligence that can help to configure protections against imminent threats, mitigate attacks in progress, and improve their security posture. Our agile, automated, and contextual cyber threat intelligence also enables your security teams to adjust and refine your own defenses to block threats originating in your supply chain.

With Bitsight, your security teams can:

• Expose threat actor activity in any language, format, or platform.
• Preempt and block threats as they emerge, before they can be weaponized in an attack.
• Integrate threat management into existing security solutions according to the unique attack surface, assets, and workflows of the organization.