The Cost of Ignoring Third-Party Cybersecurity

Does five million dollars sound like a high price tag for a data breach? If you aren’t keeping an eye on third-party network access, there’s a 25% chance you’ll have to pay that bill. In the age of digitization, manufacturers increasingly have to grant data access to third-party vendors, most notably suppliers. Every third party with access represents a potential avenue for cyberattack. Managing third-party cybersecurity can be overwhelming and a drain on internal resources for companies, but ignoring the issue means rolling the dice as the number of third-party cyberattacks rose in 2022. That’s according to the new report on third-party remote access risk from the privacy, data protection and information security policy research center Ponemon Institute. According to the report in FY2022, 49% of respondents experienced a data breach or cyberattack caused by a third party, directly or indirectly. That number is up from 44% in FY2021.