Supplier Assurance Questionnaires
In the context of cybersecurity, Supplier Assurance Questionnaires (SAQs) are structured sets of questions that organizations use to evaluate the security posture, practices, and controls of their third-party suppliers, vendors, or service providers. They are a critical component of a robust supply chain risk management program, aiming to identify and mitigate potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities that a supplier might introduce into the organization's ecosystem.
Essentially, an SAQ acts as a due diligence tool. Before an organization partners with a supplier, or on an ongoing basis for existing relationships, it sends an SAQ to gain insight into how the supplier handles sensitive data, secures its systems, and complies with relevant cybersecurity regulations and industry standards.
Purpose of Supplier Assurance Questionnaires in Cybersecurity:
The primary purposes of SAQs in cybersecurity include:
Risk Identification and Mitigation: Suppliers often have access to an organization's critical systems, data, or networks. SAQs help uncover potential weaknesses in a supplier's security practices that could be exploited by cyber attackers, leading to data breaches, system outages, or other security incidents. By identifying these risks upfront, organizations can work with suppliers to implement necessary safeguards or choose alternative partners.
Regulatory Compliance: Many industries are subject to strict regulations (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, ISO 27001) that require organizations to manage third-party risks. SAQs provide documented evidence of a supplier's compliance with these regulations, helping the organization maintain its compliance obligations.
Protecting Reputation and Business Continuity: A security incident involving a supplier can severely damage an organization's reputation, lead to financial losses, and disrupt business operations. SAQs help ensure that suppliers have adequate security measures in place to prevent such incidents, thereby safeguarding the organization's brand and ensuring continuity of service.
Informed Decision-Making: The responses to an SAQ provide valuable data that helps organizations make informed decisions about whether to engage with a particular supplier, what level of risk that supplier poses, and what contractual security requirements should be put in place.
Establishing a Baseline: SAQs can establish a baseline of a supplier's security controls, allowing for ongoing monitoring and assessment of changes in their security posture over time.
Key Components and Topics Covered in SAQs:
While the specific questions in an SAQ can vary depending on the organization's risk profile, the criticality of the supplier, and the type of data or services involved, common areas covered include:
Organizational Security Profile and Governance:
Existence of documented security policies and procedures.
Defined roles and responsibilities for information security.
Regular communication of security risks to senior management.
Employee security awareness training and vetting processes.
Incident reporting arrangements.
Data Security and Privacy:
Data classification policies.
Encryption practices for data at rest and in transit (e.g., TLS, AES-256).
Access control mechanisms (e.g., role-based access control, multi-factor authentication).
Data retention and secure deletion policies.
Compliance with data protection regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA).
Network and System Security:
Boundary firewalls and internet gateways.
Secure configuration of systems and applications.
Vulnerability management and patch management processes.
Malware protection.
Monitoring of network activity and logs.
Protection of endpoints and mobile devices.
Incident Response and Business Continuity:
Documented incident response plans (detection, containment, remediation, communication).
Testing of incident response and disaster recovery plans.
Data backup and recovery capabilities.
Physical Security:
Controls to protect data centers, servers, and other physical assets.
Secure disposal of physical media.
Third-Party and Supply Chain Management:
How the supplier assesses and manages the security of its own subcontractors and third-party dependencies.
Processes for flowing down security requirements to their supply chain.
Certifications and Compliance:
Existence of relevant cybersecurity certifications (e.g., ISO 27001, SOC 2, Cyber Essentials).
Results of external security audits or penetration tests.
Technology and Software Security:
Visibility of provenance for technologies used.
Processes for securing in-house developed or acquired software.
Limitations and Evolution of SAQs:
While SAQs are a vital tool, they have limitations:
Snapshot in Time: A questionnaire only provides a snapshot of a supplier's security posture at a specific moment. Security environments change, so continuous monitoring is increasingly important.
Self-Attestation: Responses are based on self-attestation, which may not always reflect the true security reality. Verification through audits, security ratings, or penetration tests is often necessary for critical suppliers.
Burden: Lengthy questionnaires can be burdensome for both the requesting organization and the supplier.
To address these limitations, organizations often combine SAQs with other vendor risk management strategies, such as security ratings services, independent audits, and ongoing monitoring tools, to build a more comprehensive and dynamic view of their supply chain's cybersecurity risk.
ThreatNG, as an all-in-one external attack surface management, digital risk protection, and security ratings solution, offers comprehensive capabilities that directly address the challenges of supplier assurance in cybersecurity. It provides an outside-in perspective, akin to an attacker's view, which is invaluable for evaluating the true external security posture of a supplier without requiring any internal access or connectors.
Here's how ThreatNG would help with Supplier Assurance Questionnaires (SAQs) and how its features can be synergistically used with complementary solutions:
ThreatNG's External Discovery and Assessment Capabilities in Supplier Assurance
ThreatNG's ability to perform purely external, unauthenticated discovery means it can autonomously map a supplier's digital footprint. This is crucial for validating the information provided in an SAQ and uncovering assets or exposures that a supplier might not be aware of or might not have disclosed.
ThreatNG can perform a wide range of external assessments, providing detailed insights into various aspects of a supplier's security posture. These assessments directly contribute to understanding and verifying SAQ responses:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: ThreatNG analyzes web applications accessible from the outside to identify potential entry points for attackers, using domain intelligence to substantiate its findings. For example, suppose a supplier states in an SAQ that their web applications are secure. In that case, ThreatNG can assess this by identifying exposed parts of the web application and analyzing them for hijack susceptibility, potentially revealing vulnerabilities that contradict the SAQ response.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: ThreatNG evaluates this by analyzing a website's subdomains, DNS records, and SSL certificate statuses. If a supplier claims robust domain security, ThreatNG can pinpoint misconfigured DNS records or expired SSL certificates that could lead to subdomain takeovers, thereby providing concrete evidence for SAQ verification.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: This assessment is derived from domain intelligence (including DNS intelligence, domain name permutations, and Web3 domains) and email intelligence (email security presence and format prediction), along with the dark web presence of compromised credentials. For instance, if an SAQ asks about a supplier's defenses against phishing, ThreatNG can identify if their email domains lack DMARC, SPF, or DKIM records, or if their credentials are found on the dark web, indicating a higher susceptibility to business email compromise (BEC) and phishing attacks.
Brand Damage Susceptibility: ThreatNG assesses this based on attack surface intelligence, digital risk intelligence, ESG violations, sentiment, and financials (e.g., lawsuits, negative news), and domain intelligence. Suppose a supplier asserts a strong brand reputation and security. In that case, ThreatNG can detect negative news, lawsuits, or undisclosed ESG violations that could impact their brand and, by extension, the partnering organization.
Data Leak Susceptibility: This is derived from external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, including cloud and SaaS exposure, dark web presence (compromised credentials), domain intelligence (DNS intelligence, email security), and sentiment and financials (lawsuits, SEC Form 8-Ks). If an SAQ question covers data leak prevention, ThreatNG can discover exposed cloud buckets, compromised credentials on the dark web, or insecure email configurations that increase data leak risk.
Cyber Risk Exposure: This considers factors from ThreatNG's Domain Intelligence module, like certificates, subdomain headers, vulnerabilities, and sensitive ports. It also factors in code secret exposure (discovery and content investigation of code repositories for sensitive data), cloud and SaaS exposure (evaluation of cloud services and SaaS solutions), and compromised credentials on the dark web. For example, if a supplier claims all critical ports are closed, ThreatNG can verify this by identifying open sensitive ports, exposed private IPs, or known vulnerabilities linked to those services. It can also identify if a supplier's mobile apps or code repositories expose sensitive access or security credentials.
ESG Exposure: ThreatNG rates organizations based on discovered environmental, social, and governance (ESG) violations from its external attack surface and digital risk intelligence. It analyzes areas such as competition, consumer, employment, environment, financial, government contracting, healthcare, and safety-related offenses. This is valuable for SAQs that delve into a supplier's broader governance and compliance, revealing risks beyond technical security. For example, if a supplier's SAQ asserts strong ethical practices, ThreatNG could flag a documented ESG violation related to consumer data privacy or labor practices.
Supply Chain & Third-Party Exposure: This is derived from Domain Intelligence (enumeration of vendor technologies from DNS and subdomains), Technology Stack, and Cloud and SaaS Exposure. This is directly relevant to SAQs concerning a supplier's supply chain risk management. ThreatNG can map out the technologies a supplier uses and their cloud/SaaS dependencies, allowing the organization to assess the cascaded risk. For instance, if a supplier uses a specific cloud provider, ThreatNG can detect if that provider has had recent security incidents, which would directly impact the supplier.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This assessment uses external attack surface and digital risk intelligence, including domain intelligence (exposed sensitive ports, private IPs, vulnerabilities), dark web presence (compromised credentials, ransomware events and gang activity), and sentiment and financials (SEC Form 8-Ks). If a supplier states they have not experienced any breaches, ThreatNG can identify compromised credentials or ransomware events associated with them on the dark web, providing a critical counter-indicator.
Mobile App Exposure: ThreatNG evaluates how exposed an organization’s mobile apps are through discovery in marketplaces and by analyzing their content for access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers. If a supplier provides mobile applications, ThreatNG can identify if these apps inadvertently expose sensitive keys or tokens, a significant cybersecurity risk that an SAQ alone might not uncover.
Positive Security Indicators: This feature detects and highlights beneficial security controls and configurations, like Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) or multi-factor authentication (MFA), from an external attacker's perspective. This provides objective evidence of a supplier's security strengths, offering a more balanced view and validating positive responses in an SAQ. For example, if an SAQ asks about WAF deployment, ThreatNG can externally validate its presence and effectiveness.
External GRC Assessment: ThreatNG offers a continuous, outside-in evaluation of an organization's Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) posture, mapping findings to frameworks like PCI DSS and POPIA. This directly supports SAQ sections on regulatory compliance, providing independent verification of a supplier's adherence to specific standards. For example, if a supplier confirms PCI DSS compliance in an SAQ, ThreatNG can identify external vulnerabilities or exposed assets that conflict with PCI DSS requirements.
External Threat Alignment: ThreatNG aligns an organization's security posture with external threats by identifying vulnerabilities and exposures in a manner that an attacker would, directly mapping to techniques like MITRE ATT&CK. This allows an organization to understand how a supplier's weaknesses could be exploited by an adversary, providing actionable intelligence beyond typical SAQ responses.
ThreatNG's robust reporting capabilities are essential for summarizing and communicating the findings of supplier assessments. It provides:
Executive Reports: For high-level summaries relevant to decision-makers.
Technical Reports: Detailed findings for security teams.
Prioritized Reports: Categorized by risk levels (High, Medium, Low, Informational) to help organizations prioritize efforts and allocate resources effectively.
Security Ratings (A through F): A clear, digestible rating of a supplier's security posture.
Specific Reports: Such as Ransomware Susceptibility, U.S. SEC Filings, and External GRC Assessment Mappings (PCI DSS and POPIA).
These reports can directly inform the risk assessment associated with a supplier's SAQ, providing objective data to support or challenge self-attested claims. They help organizations understand the context and reasoning behind identified risks, offering recommendations for mitigation and links to additional resources.
Beyond initial assessments, ThreatNG offers continuous monitoring of external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings for all organizations. This is critical because a supplier's security posture is dynamic. Constant monitoring ensures that if a supplier's security declines or new vulnerabilities emerge, the partnering organization is immediately aware, allowing for proactive intervention or re-evaluation, even after an SAQ has been completed. For example, if a supplier passes an SAQ, continuous monitoring could detect a newly exposed sensitive port or a sudden increase in dark web compromised credentials that were not present during the initial assessment.
ThreatNG's detailed investigation modules provide deep dives into specific areas, allowing for thorough validation of SAQ responses:
Domain Intelligence:
Domain Overview: Provides a digital presence word cloud, Microsoft Entra identification, domain enumeration, bug bounty programs, and SwaggerHub instances for API documentation. For example, if an SAQ mentions specific APIs, ThreatNG can discover their documentation via SwaggerHub, allowing for external review.
DNS Intelligence: Includes domain record analysis (IP identification, vendors, and technology), domain name permutations (taken and available), and Web3 domains. This can confirm a supplier's network configurations and identify potential typo-squatting risks.
Email Intelligence: Reveals security presence (DMARC, SPF, DKIM records), format predictions, and harvested emails. This directly verifies a supplier's email security controls, which are often discussed in SAQs regarding phishing prevention.
WHOIS Intelligence: Provides WHOIS analysis and other domains owned by the supplier. This can uncover undisclosed associated domains that might be part of the supplier's attack surface.
Subdomain Intelligence: Offers HTTP responses, header analysis (security and deprecated headers), server technologies, cloud hosting, e-commerce platforms, CMS, CRM, email marketing, and detection of critical exposures like admin pages, APIs, development environments, and sensitive ports (IoT/OT, industrial control systems, databases, remote access services). If an SAQ asks about the technologies used or critical services exposed, ThreatNG can provide an unauthenticated verification of these.
IP Intelligence: Identifies IPs, shared IPs, ASNs, country locations, and private IPs.
Certificate Intelligence: Reveals TLS certificate status, issuers, active certificates, and associated organizations. This helps confirm the use of proper encryption and identify expired or misconfigured certificates.
Social Media: ThreatNG can monitor an organization's social media posts, breaking out content, hashtags, links, and tags. This can provide insights into public sentiment or potential disclosures that might not be in an SAQ.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This module discovers public code repositories and uncovers digital risks such as exposed access credentials (API keys, access tokens, generic and cloud credentials), security credentials (cryptographic keys), configuration files (application, system, network), database exposures (files, credentials), application data exposures (remote access, encryption keys, Java keystores, code repository data), activity records (command history, logs, network traffic), communication platform configurations, development environment configurations, security testing tools, cloud service configurations, remote access credentials, system utilities, personal data, and user activity. For example, if an SAQ states that no sensitive data is stored in code repositories, ThreatNG can find contradicting evidence by discovering exposed API keys or private SSH keys.
Mobile Application Discovery: Discovers mobile apps in marketplaces and identifies the presence of access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers within them. This is crucial for suppliers developing mobile applications, validating their security claims.
Search Engine Exploitation:
Website Control Files: Discovers robots.txt and security.txt files, identifying exposed directories (secure, user, shopping cart, email, admin, development resources, API), emails, and security policy information. This directly informs SAQ questions about public-facing security information and controlled access.
Search Engine Attack Surface: Helps investigate susceptibility to exposing errors, general advisories, IoT entities, persistent exploitation, potential sensitive information, privileged folders, public passwords, susceptible files, susceptible servers, user data, and web servers via search engines. This can reveal inadvertently exposed sensitive information.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: Identifies sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services, cloud service impersonations, and open exposed cloud buckets (AWS, Azure, GCP). It also enumerates specific SaaS implementations used by the organization. This provides concrete evidence for SAQ questions about cloud use and can uncover shadow IT or misconfigurations.
Online Sharing Exposure: Detects organizational entity presence on code-sharing platforms like Pastebin and GitHub Gist, or other sharing platforms like Scribd and Slideshare. This can reveal inadvertent data leaks.
Sentiment and Financials: Covers organizational lawsuits, layoff chatter, SEC filings (especially risk and oversight disclosures and Form 8-Ks), and ESG violations. This provides non-technical risk indicators that could impact a supplier's reliability.
Archived Web Pages: Discovers archived API, document, email, and other files, including login pages, directories, subdomains, and user names. This can reveal past exposures or outdated information that is still accessible.
Dark Web Presence: Identifies organizational mentions of related people, places, or things, associated ransomware events, and compromised credentials. This is a critical module for assessing a supplier's susceptibility to targeted attacks and data breaches.
Technology Stack: Enumerates all technologies used by the organization, including accounting tools, analytics, API management, CMS, CRM, databases, developer platforms, e-commerce, email, security, and web servers. This helps verify a supplier's technology claims in an SAQ and identify potential software vulnerabilities.
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache)
ThreatNG's continuously updated intelligence repositories, branded as DarCache, provide critical context for external assessments and validating SAQ responses:
Dark Web (DarCache Dark Web): Direct insight into compromised information related to the supplier.
Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): Identifies if a supplier's credentials have been compromised, directly impacting their security posture.
Ransomware Groups and Activities (DarCache Ransomware): Tracks over 70 ransomware gangs and their activities, providing insight into potential threats against a supplier.
Vulnerabilities (DarCache Vulnerability): Offers a holistic approach to managing external risks by understanding real-world exploitability, likelihood, and potential impact. This includes:
NVD (DarCache NVD): Provides deep understanding of technical characteristics and potential impact of each vulnerability, including attack complexity, vector, and impact scores.
EPSS (DarCache EPSS): Offers a probabilistic estimate of the likelihood of a vulnerability being exploited soon, allowing for forward-looking prioritization.
KEV (DarCache KEV): Identifies vulnerabilities actively being exploited in the wild, providing critical context for prioritizing remediation.
Verified Proof-of-Concept (PoC) Exploits (DarCache eXploit): Direct links to PoC exploits accelerate understanding of how a vulnerability can be exploited, aiding in assessing real-world impact and developing mitigation strategies.
These vulnerability intelligence sources enable organizations to verify if a supplier has outstanding critical vulnerabilities and if they are actively being exploited, which is a key question in many SAQs.ESG Violations (DarCache ESG): Provides insights into a supplier's competition, consumer, employment, environment, financial, government contracting, healthcare, and safety-related offenses.
Bug Bounty Programs (DarCach Bug Bounty): Identifies in-scope and out-of-scope bug bounty programs.
SEC Form 8-Ks (DarCache 8-K): Provides relevant financial and operational disclosures for publicly traded US companies.
Mobile Apps (DarCache Mobile): Confirms the presence of access credentials, security credentials, and platform-specific identifiers within mobile apps.
These intelligence repositories provide objective, continuously updated data points that can be cross-referenced with supplier SAQ responses, dramatically improving the accuracy and depth of third-party risk assessments.
Synergies with Complementary Solutions
While ThreatNG is a comprehensive solution, it can synergize effectively with other cybersecurity tools to create an even more robust supplier assurance program:
GRC Platforms: ThreatNG's External GRC Assessment capabilities, which map findings to frameworks like PCI DSS and POPIA, can feed directly into an organization's existing GRC platform. The external, unauthenticated insights provided by ThreatNG on a supplier's compliance posture can complement the internal control attestations managed within a GRC system. For example, a GRC platform might track a supplier's internal audit results. At the same time, ThreatNG provides real-time, external validation of compliance aspects by identifying exposed assets or vulnerabilities that contradict GRC framework adherence.
Vulnerability Management Solutions: ThreatNG's detailed vulnerability intelligence, including NVD, EPSS, KEV, and PoC exploits, focuses on external, attacker-centric vulnerabilities. This can complement internal vulnerability scanners used by a supplier (or by the organization for its internal assets). Suppose a supplier uses an internal vulnerability management solution. In that case, ThreatNG can provide an independent, external view of their exploitable weaknesses, helping to prioritize remediation efforts on vulnerabilities that are not just severe but also likely to be weaponized.
Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Platforms: ThreatNG's continuous monitoring and risk prioritization capabilities can trigger automated workflows within a SOAR platform. For instance, if ThreatNG detects a critical new vulnerability or a significant increase in a supplier's dark web exposure, it could automatically generate an alert in the SOAR platform, initiate a re-assessment workflow, or even send an automated notification to the supplier for immediate action. This streamlines the incident response process for third-party risks.
Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) Systems: The detailed security findings and risk ratings from ThreatNG's reports can be integrated into CLM systems. This ensures that security clauses and service level agreements (SLAs) with suppliers are informed by real-world security posture, allowing for more precise contractual obligations and enforcement. For example, if ThreatNG identifies a high data leak susceptibility for a critical supplier, the CLM system could ensure the contract includes stricter data protection clauses and auditing rights.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) Systems: While ThreatNG focuses on external exposure, its findings regarding compromised credentials on the dark web can inform an organization's IAM strategy for third-party access. If a supplier's credentials are found to be compromised, the IAM system could automatically enforce stricter access policies, such as mandatory password resets or multi-factor authentication for that supplier's authorized users accessing the organization's systems.
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): ThreatNG's rich intelligence repositories (DarCache Dark Web, Rupture, Ransomware, Vulnerability, ESG, etc.) can enrich an organization's existing TIP. This allows for a more holistic view of the threat landscape by combining ThreatNG's external, attack surface-specific intelligence with broader threat feeds from other sources, leading to more informed threat hunting and proactive defense strategies for supplier-related risks.
By combining ThreatNG's unique external perspective and continuous monitoring with these complementary solutions, organizations can move beyond static SAQ responses to a dynamic, verifiable, and actionable supplier assurance program. This synergy creates a more complete picture of third-party cybersecurity risk and enhances the ability to manage and mitigate it effectively.
