ISO 27001 Supply Chain Risk
An ISO 27001 Supply Chain Risk, as addressed by control A.5.23 (Information security in supplier relationships), refers to the potential for the protection of an organization's information and assets to be compromised due to vulnerabilities, failures, or malicious actions within its network of external parties. This includes vendors, partners, outsourcers, and any third party that has access to the organization’s information, systems, or infrastructure.
In a cybersecurity context, this risk is particularly acute because the weakest link in an organization's defense is often a smaller, less secure supplier. The control requires organizations to ensure that all security requirements are addressed, implemented, and maintained by these third-party suppliers.
Specific manifestations of supply chain risk include:
Third-Party Access Failures: A supplier with remote access to an organization’s network, often using a VPN, may have weak access controls or poor endpoint security, allowing an attacker to compromise the supplier and, through that entry point, attack the leading organization.
Service and Infrastructure Exposure: Risks arise when third-party services—such as cloud hosting, SaaS applications, or developer tools—are configured insecurely or suffer a security incident. For instance, a cloud provider’s misconfigured storage bucket could leak the organization's data.
Software Component Integrity: This relates to risks introduced by software components, libraries, or third-party open-source code. If this software is compromised, vulnerable, or contains malicious code, it poses a direct integrity risk to the organization's applications.
Lack of Due Diligence and Monitoring: The failure to conduct proper security due diligence before engaging a supplier and to continuously monitor the supplier's security posture after engagement constitutes the organizational failure of this control.
Reputational and Compliance Risks: A security incident originating from a supplier (such as an ESG violation) can still result in fines, reputational damage, and operational disruption for the contracting organization, even if the organization itself was not directly breached.
Mitigating this risk requires establishing precise security requirements in supplier agreements, maintaining continuous security oversight, and verifying that suppliers meet the agreed-upon security standards.
ThreatNG is an invaluable tool for managing ISO 27001 Supply Chain Risk (A.5.23) because it focuses on the external, observable security posture of an organization's vendors and third-party partners. By continuously monitoring third-party external attack surfaces, ThreatNG provides the objective evidence needed to comply with security oversight control requirements in supplier relationships.
External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG performs purely External Discovery using unauthenticated methods to identify all digital assets belonging to or associated with a supplier. This step is critical because third-party unknown or shadow IT assets are often the vector for supply chain compromise. The platform's Continuous Monitoring ensures that, once a supplier is onboarded, their external security posture is continuously tracked. This prevents control failures from newly deployed, insecure vendor assets and validates the ongoing effectiveness of the supply agreement's security clauses.
External Assessment and Security Ratings
ThreatNG provides the Supply Chain & Third-Party Exposure Security Rating (A–F), which is derived directly from its assessment of external supplier risks. This rating provides a continuous, measurable, and objective indicator of a supplier's risk to the organization, which auditors require for A.5.23.
Examples of ThreatNG helping with Supply Chain Risk through assessments include:
Supply Chain & Third-Party Exposure Rating: This rating is based on:
Cloud Exposure: Identifying externally identified cloud environments and exposed open cloud buckets belonging to the vendor. For instance, a vendor with exposed open cloud buckets (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) creates a direct risk of data leakage for the contracting organization, validating a supplier-related control failure.
SaaS Identification and Enumeration of Vendors: Identifying all third-party vendors and technologies within domain records, providing a complete picture of the supplier's external technology dependencies. This helps scope the due diligence required for the relationship.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: This rating is highly relevant to third-party services. ThreatNG identifies if a vendor's subdomain, such as one pointing to an abandoned third-party service like a specific Heroku app or an unclaimed landing page builder like LaunchRock, is susceptible to takeover. A successful takeover could allow an attacker to impersonate the supplier in a supply chain attack.
Investigation Modules
ThreatNG's modules provide deep, technical evidence on a supplier’s security vulnerabilities, directly informing the risk assessment required by A.5.23.
Examples of ThreatNG helping with Supply Chain Risk using these modules include:
Subdomain Intelligence (Cloud Hosting): This module identifies specific third-party cloud hosting and SaaS providers used by the supplier, such as Zendesk (Service Desk), HubSpot (CRM), or various cloud platforms (AWS, Azure). This validates which of the client's data or processes are reliant on external systems, allowing the organization to focus its A.5.23 requirements on those specific vendors.
Technology Stack: ThreatNG exhaustively discovers nearly 4,000 technologies, including niche/unmatched/specialized vendors. This allows the contracting organization to verify whether a supplier is using outdated or high-risk software, such as an older version of PHP, which could expose the client to indirect risk through the supplier's infrastructure.
Sentiment and Financials (ESG Violations): This module identifies a supplier’s publicly disclosed ESG Violations (e.g., employment, safety, environment). While seemingly non-technical, these violations indicate poor governance and risk management within the supplier, which is a key component of A.5.23 and supply chain oversight.
Intelligence Repositories
ThreatNG’s Intelligence Repositories (DarCache) provide immediate, actionable threat context regarding a supplier.
Ransomware Groups and Activities (DarCache Ransomware): If ThreatNG tracks a supplier's confirmed association with a ransomware event, this is critical and immediate evidence that the supplier’s security controls have failed. This is used to reassess the risk of continuing to do business with that supplier.
Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): By identifying whether a supplier uses a technology with an active Known Exploited Vulnerability (KEV), ThreatNG can validate that the supplier's patching and technical vulnerability management controls are ineffective.
Reporting
ThreatNG generates reports that translate a supplier's external risk into a governance context. The External GRC Assessment Mappings and Security Ratings reports provide the evidence required by A.5.23. These reports provide the organization with the Legal-Grade Attribution needed to enforce security requirements in the supplier relationship or to justify terminating the ties due to non-compliance with information security controls.
ThreatNG and Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external monitoring of suppliers aligns with internal systems used to manage relationships and internal security controls.
Vendor Risk Management (VRM) Platforms: When ThreatNG generates a new Supply Chain & Third-Party Exposure Security Rating (e.g., dropping from A to D) due to a critical finding, such as an Exposed Open Cloud Bucket on the vendor’s infrastructure, this evidence is fed into the VRM platform. This cooperation automatically updates the vendor's risk score within the platform. It triggers an automated corrective action plan to the vendor, validating the organization's control over Information security in supplier relationships (A.5.23).
Contract Management and Governance Platforms: A severe finding by ThreatNG, such as a Dark Web Mention of the supplier's credentials being compromised, can be used to notify the platform. This cooperation allows for the immediate review of the contract’s termination clauses related to security breaches and validates that the organization is exercising its right to security oversight.
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): ThreatNG’s discovery of malicious Domain Name Permutations - Taken with Mail Record related to a supplier can be fed into a TIP. This cooperation allows the organization to proactively push external blocking rules into its network perimeter (e.g., a firewall and email gateway) to protect its employees from phishing attacks that impersonate the compromised supplier.
