Do you know how well your vendors, business associates, contracted third parties (who I will collectively call “contractors”) are protecting the information with which you’ve entrusted them to perform some sort of business activity? You need to know.

Late last year, a study of breaches in the retail industry revealed 33 percent of them were from third party vendor access vulnerabilities. The largest healthcare breach in 2014 was from a business associate (the contractor of a hospital system) and involved the records of 4.5 million patients.

The list of breaches caused by contractors throughout all industries could fill a large book. The damage that your third parties can cause to your business can be significant. Do you know the risks that your contractors and other third parties bring to your organization? Or, will your contractors take down your business because of their poor security and privacy practices? (more…)