Third-party Risk Management (TPRM) was built to help organizations understand and govern risk beyond their walls, but the operating model is being overtaken by the ecosystem it is meant to control. Vendor populations are expanding, critical dependencies are deepening, and the evidence used to make decisions is often incomplete, inconsistent, or already out of date.
The uncomfortable truth is that many programs are still organized to process assessments while the business needs them to manage an ecosystem and the associated risks. The result is a widening gap between the volume and speed of third-party risk and the capacity of TPRM programs to respond. Teams spend scarce expertise chasing documents, interpreting incomparable reports, and revisiting basic facts instead of identifying the exposures most capable of disrupting critical operations or compromising sensitive data.
Why This Is Needed Now
Third-party dependence has crossed from a procurement concern into a material source of enterprise exposure. Organizations are adding vendors, concentrating critical operations in a smaller number of providers, inheriting deeper supply-chain dependencies, and relying on point-in-time reviews while risk changes continuously.
The evidence shows that the operating environment is accelerating faster than the traditional review cycle:
- Nearly half of breaches now reach the enterprise through the ecosystem: the 2026 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that 48% of breaches involved a third party, a 60% year-over-year increase.
- The World Economic Forum reported that 54% of large organizations identify supply-chain interdependencies as the greatest barrier to achieving cyber resilience.
- KPMG found that only 15% of TPRM leaders have high confidence in the data underpinning their programs, while just 18% report that TPRM is fully integrated with enterprise risk management.
New research coming soon from HITRUST and CHIME* surveyed over 100 qualified TPRM leaders and found that:
- Nearly 55% of surveyed organizations manage more than 1,000 vendors, yet only 9.8% reported more than 20 dedicated TPRM personnel.
- 62% said their programs would not scale if vendor counts increased by more than 30%
- 48% said they cannot keep pace with assessment volume
- 39% reported onboarding delays caused by backlogs
- Every surveyed organization reported discovering at least one vendor gap or vulnerability after approval
- 23% said a vendor incident had caused clinical or operational disruption
The constraints are not on how much organizations spend. Although 81.4% of respondents reported annual TPRM program costs of at least $1 million, cost ranked last among the challenges presented. TPRM leaders placed greater emphasis that their operating model produces timely, trustworthy decisions at scale.
Together, the issues describe an interconnected operating problem: How can TPRM programs scale without sacrificing the rigor, timeliness, and confidence required to protect critical operations and data?
Introducing the TPRM Top 10
The operating problem facing TPRM leaders is no longer whether third-party risk matters. It is where to focus limited resources, expertise, and investment when vendor ecosystems are expanding faster than traditional review models can keep up. Answering that question requires moving beyond general concern and identifying the operational challenges most likely to determine whether TPRM can scale with the business, sustain confidence in risk decisions, and protect critical operations and data.
The TPRM Top 10 is a new perspective on the most pressing issues confronting modern third-party risk programs. These issues are the ones shaping board discussions, slowing vendor decisions, and consuming scarce expertise. Developed from HITRUST’s ongoing work with TPRM leaders and practitioners responsible for complex third-party ecosystems, it reflects what programs are seeing in the field and where they believe change is most urgently needed.
This list is not presented as a universal ranking or approach for all organizations. Instead, it is intended as a practical guidance for TPRM leaders to modernize their programs. Together, these issues define the work required to move from process-centered vendor review to a more scalable, evidence-driven, and enterprise-relevant model for managing third-party risk.
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# |
Issue |
What it means |
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1 |
Vendor Growth Is Outrunning TPRM Capacity |
Vendor populations are expanding faster than TPRM teams can add staffing and review capacity, leaving parts of the vendor portfolio under-reviewed. |
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2 |
Critical Vendors Become Too Important to Fail |
Some vendors are so critical to business functions that organizations have little practical ability to reject or replace them, even when assessments identify material concerns. |
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3 |
Lack of Assurance Comparability |
Inconsistent scoring and reporting methods make it difficult to compare assurance reports and results across vendors. |
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4 |
Manual Work is Consuming TPRM Capacity |
Spreadsheets, questionnaires, and disconnected tools consume capacity that should be spent evaluating and reducing risk. |
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5 |
Hidden Vendor Risks |
Vague scopes, inconsistent assurance methods, and limited exception reporting can obscure material control gaps until a vendor has already been approved. |
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6 |
Incorrect or Incomplete Risk Tiering Is Directing Attention to the Wrong Places |
Incorrect or incomplete tiering makes it harder to identify which vendors pose the greatest exposure, spreading scarce resources too thin. |
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7 |
Limited Visibility Into the Deep Supply Chain |
Organizations often lack a clear view of the subcontractors and other downstream parties supporting their most critical vendors. |
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8 |
Concentration Risk Turns Vendor Failures Into Enterprise Events |
Heavy dependence on a small number of providers can turn one vendor incident into a broader enterprise disruption. |
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9 |
Unreliable Vendor Data Undermines Risk Decisions |
Incomplete or unreliable information weakens risk decisions and delays action. |
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10 |
Vendor Risk Changing Faster Than Reassessment Cycles |
Without timely reassessment, material changes in a vendor’s security posture can go undetected between formal reviews |
Addressing the Top 10 in Practice
This blog launches a series of posts that will explore each of the ten issues in greater detail including why it matters, what the evidence shows, and what TPRM leaders can do to respond. Be sure to follow HITRUST on LinkedIn and X to know when the next blog in the series is posted.
* CHIME Digital Health Analytics. Third-Party Risk Management Assurance: Strategic Market Validation Survey. Commissioned by HITRUST. Ann Arbor, MI: College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, Digital Health Analytics 2026. In July 2026, HITRUST commissioned CHIME Digital Health Analytics to conduct a blinded market-validation survey of 102 qualified respondents from separate healthcare provider organizations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue. Respondents represented security and GRC leadership, TPRM ownership, procurement and vendor management, legal and contracting, and executive leadership. Every participating organization actively managed at least 200 third-party vendors, and 87% managed more than 500.