What is Vendor Tiering? Tips to Improve Your Vendor Risk Management

**Executive Summary:** This document explains vendor tiering as a method to classify and manage third- and fourth-party cybersecurity risk, compares manual and questionnaire-based approaches, lists four best practices (evaluate security posture, continuously monitor third-party attack surface, map questionnaire answers to security frameworks, and establish expectations/contracts), and highlights SecurityScorecard’s Security Ratings platform as a tool to automate validation and streamline vendor risk management.