CyberVadis: Integrated Approach to Managing Supply Chain Vendor Risk

“It has become imperative that global organizations take an integrated approach to supply chain vendor risk management, covering the 360-degree view of their risk landscape,” advises Pierre-Francois Thaler, the co-founder, and co-CEO of EcoVadis. The reason? The growing augmentation of regulations and mandates has made organizations realize that they need to reinvent their siloed approach toward monitoring the risk of all the vendors in their supply chain. “What makes the job of creating an integrated approach difficult for supply chain organizations is that these vendors are distributed over various geographical regions, and to work with them seamlessly may require a number of human resource and systems. That’s where EcoVadis comes in,” says Thaler. Founded over 12 years ago with an aim to assist chief supply chain and chief procurement officers in mitigating supplier risks, the company provides an online platform for companies to avoid duplication of CSR audits and surveys. This allows them to create an integrated and singular approach towards supply chain vendor evaluation by leveraging EcoVadis’ cloud technology and remote analysis expertise.

Cybervadis was created last year as a spin-off of EcoVadis to leverage the same technology and business model but apply it to cybersecurity and data privacy (GDRP) 3rd parties risk assessment. Clients can access ratings and scorecards for the security robustness of different vendors on a singular platform. Through its risk assessment methodology, Cybervadis works with the key stakeholders of a supply chain organization to assist them in identifying the vendors with the best cybersecurity performance. The ones with the highest ranks are invited to register on Cybervadis’ online network. Depending on the vendor’s profile, the company’s system creates dynamic set of questions, answers to which are reviewed in by their cybersecurity analysts, along with evidence documentation. After the evaluation, score-cards and ratings are created to depict the cybersecurity performance of each vendor. At the end of the day, CyberVadis provides both the vendors as well as the clients with clear recommendations that enable them to improve their security posture.