The consequences of a cyber incident remain as serious as ever—disruption of operations, exposure of sensitive data, and an erosion of customer trust and brand integrity. But the nature of cyber threats is always in flux, and companies today face more risk factors.

There are a few reasons for our current, heightened moment of risk. Attacks like phishing schemes and ransomware have grown more sophisticated, for one. Companies are also working with more third parties and vendors than ever before; data from our 2024 TPRM Impact Report shows a 12% increase in vendor inventory over 2023. This growth increases the attack surface of the organization.

Risk remediation and response are important capabilities in this environment, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Proactive security assessments identify potential vulnerabilities in your organization’s defenses before attackers can exploit them. Let’s take an in-depth look at security assessments, from their benefits and how to get started to the different kinds of assessments.

One quick note: at Whistic, we obviously view the threat awareness challenge through the specific lens of third-party risk management. You’ll find info about those kinds of assessments below, but we’ve also indicated the role that other assessment types might play in TPRM where appropriate.

What Are Security Assessments?

A security assessment is a systematic process of identifying, analyzing, and addressing potential vulnerabilities in an organization’s infrastructure, applications, and processes. By evaluating your overall security posture, you gain a clearer picture of where improvements are needed.

For example, during an assessment, a retailer might discover that its payment system isn’t PCI DSS compliant, leaving it open to fines and breaches. Addressing these gaps strengthens compliance and protects sensitive customer data.

Why They Matter
Security assessments go beyond just identifying risks—they enable businesses to:

Meet industry compliance requirements
Minimize the risk of financial and reputational damage.
Create a roadmap for achieving long-term cybersecurity resilience.

Key Benefits of Security Assessments

Security assessments offer critical advantages for businesses of all sizes, including:

Proactive risk mitigation: Identifying vulnerabilities early reduces the likelihood of costly breaches. For example, a healthcare organization conducting a routine security assessment may uncover vulnerabilities in its patient management system, preventing a data breach.
Regulatory compliance: As cyber threats evolve and proliferate, regulatory requirements must evolve to keep up. Regular security assessments ensure regulatory compliance by aligning with established frameworks like GDPR, ISO 27001, or SOC 2.
Better vendor inventory management: Especially in larger organizations, simply maintaining a clear picture of how many vendors you use can be a challenge. This is in part because it’s easier than ever for business units to use their own cloud-based applications—creating “Shadow IT” that can fall outside established security controls. Regular security assessments improve visibility into Shadow IT and help prevent surprise breaches.
More “bang for your buck”: Are you getting the most value out of your third-party software investment? Many organizations only utilize some small sub-set of software features. While a security assessment is not the same as a vendor audit, it can help to uncover underutilized tech that could create more value—or discontinued entirely, saving you money and reducing complexity.
Enhanced stakeholder confidence: Demonstrating strong security practices reassures customers and partners, critical for industries like banking and healthcare.
Reduced downtime: Addressing vulnerabilities before a breach occurs helps prevent operational disruptions.
Cost savings: Addressing vulnerabilities early minimizes the financial and reputational impact of cyberattacks. According to IBM's “Cost of a Data Breach” report, the average cost of a breach in 2023 was $4.45 million—assessments are a fraction of that cost.
Improved employee awareness: Regular assessments often reveal gaps in employee training or adherence to security protocols, enabling businesses to refine their education programs.
Increased communication and collaboration: Security assessments require coordination among several stakeholders. Regular, systematized assessments improve cross-functional collaboration, increase visibility, and sharpen business acumen.

Different Types of Security Assessments

Every organization is different—each faces different levels of regulatory scrutiny, deals in various kinds of sensitive or proprietary data, and has their own unique risk appetite (depending on factors like their openness to innovation or intense competition).

Similarly, there are unique types of security assessments to address the individual needs of your organization. The most thorough assessments will incorporate each kind of approach for a 360-degree view of your security posture, but any combination of these assessment types may be appropriate for your business.

Security threat assessments focus on identifying and prioritizing potential threats to an organization, such as phishing campaigns targeting employees or unpatched systems in your infrastructure. For example, a manufacturing company might uncover IoT devices on its factory floor that are transmitting unencrypted data, posing a risk to its operations.
Application security assessments examine the security of software applications, both in development and deployment. These may leverage resources like the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP), which provides its top 10 vulnerabilities annually. These include risks such as injection flaws or misconfigured access controls. So, for example, a SaaS provider conducting an application assessment may discover outdated libraries in their codebase that are vulnerable to exploitation.
Cloud security assessments evaluate the security of data, applications, and infrastructure in cloud environments. Things like misconfigured S3 buckets in a cloud service could expose customer records to public access. A cloud security assessment ensures proper configurations and permissions.
Vendor security assessments review the security practices of third-party vendors and partners to ensure supply chain resilience. As an example, a finance company could evaluate its payment gateway provider’s encryption methods to ensure compliance with PCI DSS standards.
Third-and-fourth party security assessments extend security risk management of your direct vendors to other external entities like suppliers and contractors—and potentially even further down the chain with suppliers of suppliers. Incidents like the SolarWinds breach demonstrate the risks of not performing robust third-and-fourth party assessments, as malicious updates compromised thousands of organizations worldwide.

A thorough third-party assessment has traditionally required the manual exchange and evaluation of security documentation between vendors and their customers. Additional information is often obtained through the exchange of detailed security questionnaires. But advances in AI solutions (like the Whistic Platform) have ushered in Modern TPRM, which can fully automate this process—making it dramatically faster to do a complete assessment on each supplier.

How to Conduct a Security Assessment

These best practices will help you organize your approach to security assessments:

Preparation
- Scope definition: Decide what systems, networks, or applications to assess.
- Stakeholder alignment: Bring together IT, Security, Compliance, Legal, and stakeholders from relevant business units teams to define objectives.
- Example: A retail company preparing for a PCI DSS compliance audit might focus its assessment on its point-of-sale systems and payment processing network.
Assessment Execution
- Use automated tools for vulnerability scanning and manual testing for in-depth analysis.
- Conduct penetration testing to simulate real-world attacks and gauge system resilience.
- In the case of a TPRM or vendor assessment, your assessment execution may include standardized security frameworks (like SOC 2) or customized questionnaires tailored to your unique requirements. Depending on the vendor, you may also include measures like a site visit.
Reporting Findings
- Summarize vulnerabilities with clear recommendations.
- Prioritize based on potential impact and likelihood.
- Example: A report might highlight a critical SQL injection vulnerability in a customer-facing application and recommend immediate patching.
Leverage Tools
- Platforms like Whistic Assess streamline assessments with templates, automation, and centralized documentation.

When to Use Security Assessments

Given the ever-changing nature of the threat landscape, consistency and regularity are key for your assessment strategy. Annual reviews are essential for routine maintenance of your security posture. They also make it easier to anticipate future needs for strategic planning.

But we also recommend a fresh security assessment following other key actions, including:

Major changes: Following system upgrades, acquisitions, or cloud migrations
Incident response: After detecting suspicious activity or a breach
Vendor onboarding: Evaluate third-party vendors before signing contracts to ensure alignment with your security standards

Make Excellence in Third-Party Risk Management the Bedrock of Your Security Assessment Strategy

Cyber threats seem to evolve daily, and regular security assessments:

Ensure you maintain regulatory compliance to avoid the most critical risks to your industry
Expose vulnerabilities so you can allocate resources and talent to high-risk areas
Help you build resilience to avoid breaches and build response plans just in case

But one of the most common sources of vulnerability are vendors and other third-and-fourth parties in your supply chain. That means that overall risk mitigation starts with your third-party ecosystem.

Whistic helps both vendors and their customers conduct more thorough vendor and third-party risk assessments without adding headcount or cutting corners on risk. Our AI-first platform allows you to automatically summarize complex documentation, automatically respond or find answers to even customized questionnaires, and source answers from your entire vendor catalog at the push of a button.

Whistic has taken the time necessary to conduct an assessment from days or weeks to minutes—so you can assess all the vendors you need and respond to every customer request without adding headcount (or headaches).

Robust security begins with Modern TPRM. Schedule some time with our experts to see it in action for yourself.