Validated assurance is the new standard for third-party trust, providing verified, benchmarked, and quality-controlled proof of security that replaces manual, self-attested processes. It enables organizations to assess, monitor, and trust vendors with confidence, reducing complexity while increasing transparency across the entire third-party ecosystem.
In our previous post, we explored why traditional third-party risk management (TPRM) models are breaking down, burdened by inefficiency, inconsistency, and incomplete assurance. Now, let’s understand the solution: validated assurance.
Validated assurance is a model that proves security and compliance, instead of just claiming it. It relies on independent verification, standardized frameworks, and centralized quality assurance to deliver consistent, defensible evidence of a vendor’s cybersecurity and privacy posture.
In short, validated assurance means you don’t have to take a vendor’s word for it. Their controls have been tested, verified, and approved against a trusted, recognized standard.
This approach solves a critical problem for both organizations evaluating vendors and vendors being assessed. It replaces unverified, inconsistent evidence with transparent, comparable results that everyone can trust.
Traditional third-party risk management relies on subjective, manual, and often redundant processes. It creates friction among risk teams and vendors. Validated assurance replaces this with standardization, evidence, and scalability.
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Common TPRM Challenge |
How Validated Assurance Solves It |
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Manual questionnaires and inconsistent evidence |
Standardized, verified assessments provide uniform results. |
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Self-attested claims and limited validation |
Independent verification confirms the accuracy of control implementation. |
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Difficult to compare vendor maturity |
Benchmarking and standardized scoring enable objective comparisons. |
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Point-in-time visibility |
Continuous updates and periodic reviews ensure ongoing risk awareness. |
With validated assurance, organizations move from reactive oversight to proactive confidence, reducing both operational overhead and uncertainty.
HITRUST pioneered validated assurance by building it into every layer of its ecosystem.
At the foundation is the HITRUST Framework, which harmonizes over 60 global regulations, standards, and best practices into one comprehensive control library. This ensures alignment across multiple requirements.
Not all vendors require the same level of scrutiny. HITRUST’s tiered assessment model (e1,i1,r2) scales rigor to vendor criticality. This flexibility helps organizations evaluate vendors appropriately without sacrificing consistency.
Every validated assessment undergoes a centralized QA review by HITRUST, ensuring each certification meets the same defensibility and quality standards, making the results uniformly reliable.
The HITRUST Framework evolves frequently to keep pace with emerging threats, vulnerabilities, and regulatory changes. This threat-adaptive model ensures that vendor assessments remain aligned with the latest risk environment.
Through integrations with platforms like ServiceNow via the HITRUST TPRM Services (formerly known as HITRUST Assessment XChange), validated assurance becomes scalable. Organizations can automate evidence reuse, monitor vendor status in real time, and streamline reporting.
With standardized controls, HITRUST enables organizations to develop efficiencies as they know exactly which controls were tested.
Validated assurance is a win-win for both sides of the third-party risk equation.
In essence, validated assurance creates a shared ecosystem of trust, where proof replaces promises, and efficiency replaces redundancy.
The transition to validated assurance is more than an operational upgrade. It’s a strategic evolution.
Explore how validated assurance transforms third-party oversight into a measurable, defensible, and scalable model of trust in our new white paper: Redefining Third-Party Risk Management with the HITRUST Validated Assurance.