— Increases in the number of vendor assessments along with the impact on the speed of sales cycles highlights the need for automation and standardization for both customers and their vendors —
Vendor security leader Whistic, Inc. announced new research that shows a 22 percent year-over-year increase in the number of vendors companies assess annually. The 2022 State of Vendor Security Report highlights the strain this increase has on infosec teams, especially when the right tools aren’t in place to streamline and automate the process.
Additionally, the report puts a spotlight on the impact responding to vendor assessment requests has on SaaS sales teams. Vendors that aren’t proactively sharing security documentation are seeing deals pushed or even lost altogether because they couldn’t respond to security reviews in time. Key insights include:
- Forty-five percent of respondents have had deals pushed back because they couldn’t respond to a security review in time.
- Another 34 percent have lost a deal entirely because they were unable to respond to a security assessment quickly enough.
- These deals are lost despite the fact that salespeople are now spending more than 10 hours a month responding to security reviews.
Findings in the report come from two surveys conducted earlier this year, featuring 315 respondents working in infosec and cybersecurity and 303 respondents working in SaaS sales.
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“Every business is reliant on the success and sustainability of its third-party vendor relationships, so unified and efficient security assessment has become a necessity”
Movement Toward Automation and Standardization
In an effort to solve these problems many companies are moving toward automation and standardization of the assessment process. The Whistic Vendor Security Network simplifies the process for both buyers and sellers, enabling vendors to easily share a Profile that includes all of their relevant security documentation with customers, while making it possible for buyers to conduct Zero-Touch Assessments of those Profiles.
In support of these findings, the study found 82 percent of respondents are willing to conduct on-demand assessments using previously completed questionnaires, while 80 percent of vendors said they would be willing to make security documentation available publicly to customers and prospects so long as they had the ability to control who sees it and for how long.
“Every business is reliant on the success and sustainability of its third-party vendor relationships, so unified and efficient security assessment has become a necessity,” said Nick Sorensen, CEO of Whistic. “We believe the Whistic Vendor Security Network is the best way to advance this expectation with transparency and reliability, to create trusted relationships that save millions of dollars in efficiency and potentially millions more in the prevention of breaches. It is an important trend and a clear solution in which everyone wins.”
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