Third-Party Review Questions Every CIO Should Be Asking
In today’s hyper-connected world, your cybersecurity posture is only as strong as your weakest vendor. From cloud providers to software platforms, billing systems to backup solutions, third-party risk is everywhere—and growing.
The catch? Many organizations have airtight internal controls… and only a vague understanding of what their third-party vendors are actually doing with their data.
At Ferrous Equine Technologies, we’ve seen firsthand how overlooked vendor risk leads to real-world consequences: breaches, compliance violations, downtime, and expensive finger-pointing. That’s why we recommend a proactive, recurring third-party review process—and it starts by asking the right questions.
Here are the essential ones every CIO (or vCIO) should be asking.
🔐 1. How is our data stored, protected, and encrypted—at rest and in transit?
This isn’t just a checkbox for compliance. It's a foundation for trust.
Make sure your vendors can clearly explain:
What encryption standards they use (e.g., AES-256)
How keys are managed
Whether data is encrypted before transmission or only once it hits their infrastructure
If they’re vague or default to “we follow best practices,” dig deeper.
🧯 2. What is your incident response process—and how will we be notified?
If your vendor experiences a breach, how and when will you find out?
Ask about:
Notification timelines
Regulatory obligations
Containment and remediation steps
Their most recent incident response test (and results)
You should also know whether their plan includes coordination with your internal response team—or leaves you out in the cold.
🧾 3. Can you share your most recent audit or security certification?
Any vendor handling sensitive data should be able to produce proof of compliance or security testing. This could include:
SOC 2 Type II
ISO 27001
HIPAA attestation
Penetration test results
And no, “we’re planning to get that next year” doesn’t count.
🛠️ 4. Who has access to our data—and how is that access controlled?
This one separates the vendors who think they’re secure from the ones who are.
Ask:
How many employees have access to your data?
Are access controls role-based?
Do they use MFA internally?
What’s their offboarding process when someone leaves?
You need to know your data isn’t accessible to anyone with a login and a wild hair.
💸 5. What happens if we want to leave—or you go out of business?
No one likes to think about the end, but smart CIOs plan for it anyway.
You should know:
How you’ll get your data back (and in what format)
How quickly systems will be decommissioned
What the data destruction policy is
Whether your access is dependent on proprietary tools or licenses
If a vendor can’t describe how they’d wind down responsibly, that’s a red flag.
🧠 6. What are you doing proactively to improve security?
Cybersecurity isn’t a “set it and forget it” game. You want partners who are actively improving—patching, testing, educating, evolving.
Ask about:
Security awareness training for their staff
Regular updates and patching schedules
Vulnerability management programs
How they handle zero-day threats
If the answer sounds passive, you may be dealing with a vendor who’s riding on hope, not strategy.
📋 Bonus: Do we have documentation on all our vendors?
Many organizations don’t know all the third-party platforms their teams are using—especially when it comes to shadow IT and cloud apps.
Create a vendor inventory with:
Who owns the relationship internally
What data is shared
The vendor’s role (critical vs. non-critical)
Renewal dates and SLAs
It’s not just for compliance—it’s for resilience.
✅ Wrapping It Up: Ask Better Questions, Get Better Partners
Third-party risk isn’t going away. If anything, it’s multiplying with every SaaS signup, every integration, and every vendor handshake.
But you don’t need to panic. You just need to ask smarter questions, document the answers, and build a review cadence that works for your environment.
Not sure where to start? We help CIOs and IT teams create practical, manageable vendor review frameworks—without the spreadsheet overload.
🧩 Need help building or cleaning up your third-party risk review process?
Let’s make it simple.
📬 info@ferrousequinetechnologies.com