What is Vendor Tiering? Optimize Your Vendor Risk Management | UpGuard

This article explains vendor tiering—classifying third-party vendors by inherent risk—to streamline TPRM, prioritize assessments, and enable scalable automation. It details benefits (efficiency in assessments, business continuity, improved metrics, automation-readiness, and supply-chain security), contrasts automated and manual tiering models with example weighting strategies, and provides best practices (clear criteria, hybrid approaches, leveraging security ratings, setting vendor expectations, and regular reviews), while outlining how UpGuard’s platform supports these capabilities.