The Vendor Tiering Series: Mapping Tiers to Inherent Risk | UpGuard

This report provides a vendor tiering framework for third-party cyber risk management, outlining five tiers (Critical, High-risk, Medium-risk, Low-risk, Transactional), the intake criteria needed to classify vendors (data/system access, operational continuity, regulatory mandates, strategic risk, security/resiliency), recommended assessment cadences, and guidance on weighted scoring and critical overrides; it emphasizes sizing the model to organizational maturity and recommends automation to scale classification and monitoring.