Third-party oversight built on data
- See early warning signals across reliability, ownership, external risk signals, and concentration
- Spot concentration and shared dependencies before incidents expose them
- Calibrate oversight to your risk profile and dependency criticality
Four governance decisions third-party oversight supports
Outcomes this capability enables
The five dependency dimensions
Third-party exposure is rarely one-dimensional. The five dimensions below are assessed together to support oversight decisions.
Operational reliability
- Incident history and operational resilience track record
- Critical service integration and blast radius
- Disruption impact and recovery expectations
Ownership structure
- Jurisdiction and corporate group structure
- Control changes (M&A, carve-outs, governance shifts)
- Regulatory and geopolitical sensitivity
External risk signals
- Public incidents and observable security posture
- Financial fragility and business instability indicators
- Reputational events that can precede disruption
Provider maturity
- Control environment and assurance evidence quality
- Incident response capability and operational discipline
- Standards and certifications in context (not as a proxy)
Systemic concentration
- Subcontractors and nested dependencies
- Shared infrastructure platforms across critical providers
- Hidden concentration and correlated failure modes
Engagement models
A targeted third-party exposure assessment across the five dimensions, delivered as a decision-ready view to prioritise actions.
This option fits well when:
- A new partner is onboarded and exposure needs to be understood early
- A yearly review is needed for the most critical dependencies
- More visibility is needed for second-order dependencies (N+1, N+2) where risk can be inherited
It produces:
- An exposure view across the five dimensions for the dependencies that matter most
- Findings that support classification, escalation, and mitigation prioritisation
- An escalation-ready brief for senior stakeholders, focused on concentration, criticality, and actionable mitigations.
Ongoing monitoring and analysis across the five dimensions, delivered as decision-ready insights and reports so your teams can act with context.
This option fits well when:
- The capability is needed, but internal capacity is constrained
- Exposure needs to be tracked continuously as providers, ownership, and dependency structure evolve
- Oversight needs to be calibrated to your risk profile (for example, monthly for critical providers, quarterly for others)
It produces:
- Monitoring and indicator updates across the five dimensions
- Risk signals and narrative that support escalation and mitigation decisions
- Reporting that stays consistent between review cycles, including governance-ready summaries
The same model implemented within your organisation as an operating capability: indicators, thresholds, governance routines, and practical outputs calibrated to dependency criticality.
This option fits well when:
- Internal capacity exists and oversight needs to be strengthened with a consistent model
- Autonomy is preferred, with knowledge and routines kept inside the organisation
- Oversight needs to scale across Technology, Procurement, and Risk without becoming a compliance exercise
It enables:
- Your teams to own the monitoring, with indicators and thresholds defined and calibrated
- Oversight routines, decision rights, and evidence flows to be embedded into governance forums
- Practical outputs to be standardised (dashboards, evidence packs, contract clauses), so decisions can be made without rebuilding context
Embedding oversight into resilience governance
Oversight works when the five dimensions translate into decision rights, thresholds, and routines that run between cycles.
Internal resilience matters as much as vendor exposure
Exposure analysis extends beyond the provider. Even when a partner looks fragile, internal resilience determines the impact.
Four internal questions should be answered alongside the five dimensions:
If migration would take years, technical entanglement is deep, or exit rights are impractical, dependency risk becomes structural and must be governed accordingly.
Frequently asked questions
Is this the same as traditional third-party risk management?
This capability is compatible with TPRM and outsourcing governance, but it shifts the emphasis from periodic documentation to operational decision-making: how dependency risk is classified, escalated, and governed between review cycles.
Is this only about the Digital Operational Resilience Act?
No. DORA increases supervisory focus on ICT dependencies, but effective oversight is valuable regardless of the regulatory driver. When designed well, compliance follows as an outcome rather than as the starting point.
Does this replace ongoing production monitoring?
No. Monitoring remains necessary. The objective is to reduce avoidable surprises by improving visibility and prevention earlier in the governance chain: classification, thresholds, and decisions that drive mitigations and exit readiness.
Are you relying on reports when you need decision-ready oversight?
If you are building or strengthening ICT third-party oversight capabilities, I can help design a model that is resilient, proportionate and defensible.