9 Third-Party Risk Cyber Gaps in 2024 | UpGuard

The report outlines key third‑party cybersecurity gaps—such as unpatched systems, open ports, weak HTTPS/WAF practices, untrusted certificates, overlooked GDPR compliance, unknown suppliers, risky user behavior, and potentially compromised vendor infrastructure—and explains how these expand an organization’s attack surface. It critiques manual assessments and generic questionnaires, noting their lack of context and timeliness, and recommends a multifaceted vendor risk management approach: comprehensive pre‑onboarding evaluations, continuous monitoring, accurate vendor inventories, improved CISO oversight, collaborative remediation with partners, enforcing least privilege, and addressing fourth‑party exposure.