Having the right compliance tool in place for your vendor security team is critical, especially as open-source data sharing continues to grow and expand in scope. Modern SaaS vendors and partners now require more data and information than ever before to ensure complete security. In order to stay on top of security and compliance needs, your team should schedule regular internal audits to ensure your team has access to the most critical functionality available.

Here are 3 features you absolutely need in your vendor compliance tool

The ideal vendor compliance tool should combine ease of use with high-level organization to make it easy for stakeholders to prioritize security and data privacy. Here are some key features your team absolutely needs in your vendor compliance solution:

1. A custom approach to vendor compliance

Assessing new vendors is not the most glamorous part of the InfoSec world, and yet many InfoSec professionals spend a significant amount of time going back and forth with vendor IT teams – through emails and shared spreadsheets, no less – to get things in place for a new vendor partnership.

Your ideal vendor compliance tool should off a custom approach tovendor security, meaning that your team has access to industry-leading questionnaires (such as CAIQ, ISO 27001, VSA, etc.) as well as the ability to create your own, custom questionnaires that get right to the bottom of your vendor risk questions.

2. Streamlined, easily accessible assessment information

One critical yet often overlooked part of the vendor assessment process is equipping internal teams outside of IT (think sales, procurement, etc.) with the information they need tomake informed, strategic decisionsfor your organization. While some compliance tools help manage the questionnaire process, it is still a manual workflow to then disseminate this information to the people who need it.

In your ideal compliance tool, sales, procurement, and other stakeholders should be able to easily access questionnaire data and answers to help move deals along without waiting on IT to step in.

3. A fully secure, sharable trust catalog

The goal of a modern, streamlined vendor risk management strategy is to make it easy for IT teams to do their jobs and onboard new vendors without sacrificing compliance or security. As you assess your new or current vendor compliance tool, make sure that it has the ability to grow and scale with your organization and your organization’s vendor needs.

Building a sharabletrust catalog—a one stop, single source of trust for both internal and external stakeholders—will be instrumental in ensuring the long-term success and scalability of your vendor risk management program.

Focus on vendor compliance with Whistic

TheWhistic vendor compliancetool is built from the ground-up for flexible IT teams looking to establish themselves as trust leaders without jumping through unnecessary hoops.

You can learn more about Whistic and how your team can leverage the power of an upgraded vendor risk management processhere.