Managed Security
Third party risk management services fail in a predictable way: every supplier gets the same 200-question spreadsheet, nobody reads the answers, and the small analytics tool with a live API token into your production database is assessed with the same rigour as the office stationery account.
Risk is not proportional to invoice value. It is proportional to what the vendor can reach (your data, your network, your customers, your ability to operate) and to how quickly you would notice if they were compromised. Tiering on that basis is what makes the programme sustainable, because it concentrates the effort where it changes something.
We build the register, tier the population, run proportionate diligence, get the security terms into the contract while you still have leverage, and monitor what matters after signature. Where a vendor needs formal examination, that is a third-party vendor audit; where their exposure appears publicly, dark web monitoring catches it.
Why you need it
01 / 06When a supplier is breached, your data is exposed, your service is down and your customers ask you about it. The contract may allocate liability; it does not restore the data or answer the phone. Your regulator holds you responsible for the processing you outsourced.
Procurement knows about the ones with purchase orders. The SaaS tools bought on departmental cards, the contractors with VPN access, the code libraries in your build and the sub-processors your processors use are all third-party risk, and they are almost never on the register.
Security requirements, audit rights, breach notification timelines, sub-processor approval and data-return terms are straightforward to negotiate before a contract is signed and nearly impossible to add afterwards. Diligence that arrives after procurement has committed is theatre.
A questionnaire answered at onboarding describes one day two years ago. Vendors get breached, get acquired, change sub-processors and let certifications lapse, and none of that generates a notification unless someone is watching.
Instrument
02 / 06The square a vendor lands in decides the diligence it gets, not the size of its invoice.
What we deliver
03 / 06Building the actual population from procurement, expenses, single sign-on logs, network egress, DNS and interviews, because the register you already have is the vendors someone remembered. Each entry records data accessed, access method, business criticality and the internal owner.
Every supplier classified by what it can reach and how badly you depend on it. Tiering is the control that makes the programme work: critical vendors get real examination, low-tier vendors get a light check, and the effort lands where it is justified.
Assessment sized to the tier, from a short attestation for low-risk suppliers to full questionnaire review, evidence inspection, certification and report validation, and technical assessment for the vendors holding your crown jewels. Existing SOC 2 reports and ISO 27001:2022 certificates are read properly, including the scope and the exceptions.
A standard security schedule and data processing agreement, plus negotiation support: breach notification within a defined period, audit and assessment rights, sub-processor approval and notification, encryption and access requirements, and data return and deletion at exit.
External security posture monitoring, breach and exposure alerting for critical suppliers, certification expiry tracking, and periodic reassessment on a cadence set by tier rather than by anniversary date.
Mapping the sub-processors your suppliers depend on, and identifying where multiple critical vendors share a single underlying provider, the concentration that turns one outage into an enterprise-wide one.
How we run it
04 / 06Cataloguing every vendor, partner and service provider that touches your data, your network or your operations, assembled from finance and identity data rather than from memory, which is why the count usually surprises people.
Weeks 1-3Tiering by data access, network access, business criticality, regulatory exposure and substitutability. The tiering model is documented so that new vendors are classified consistently rather than by whoever onboards them.
Weeks 3-4Assessment proportionate to tier, executed before contract signature so that findings can still change the terms. Critical suppliers get evidence review and, where warranted, technical assessment.
Ongoing, before onboardingSecurity schedules, data processing agreements and service levels that specify breach notification, audit rights, sub-processor governance, and what happens to your data at termination.
At contractReassessment on a tier-driven cadence, continuous external monitoring for critical suppliers, certification expiry tracking, and a defined trigger (an incident, an acquisition, a scope change) that forces an out-of-cycle review.
OngoingFindings tracked to closure with a named owner and a date, compensating controls where a vendor will not or cannot remediate, exit plans for critical dependencies, and an accepted-risk register that a decision-maker has actually signed.
OngoingKey benefits
05 / 06A live register showing every supplier, what they access, who owns the relationship and when they were last assessed, which is also the first thing a regulator asks for after an incident.
Tiering concentrates real examination on the vendors that could hurt you, so the programme stops being a spreadsheet exercise that everyone routes around.
Notification windows, audit rights and data-return obligations agreed while you still have negotiating leverage, rather than requested during an incident.
Tools we use
06 / 06No “latest tech tools”. These are the ones your report will cite, alongside the manual work that a tool cannot do for you.
Assessment frameworks
Evidence validation
External monitoring
Exposure alerting
Register and workflow
Why Aphelion
SharedDarshap Nayak, formerly of KPMG, holds a master’s degree in cybersecurity and more than seven years in security operations. Jaimin Somani brings fifteen-plus years of academic and hands-on VAPT. Hemang Desai is an ICT network specialist from Australia. You will meet them, not a logo.
Meet the teamEvery finding arrives with the reproduction steps, the affected asset and the fix, ranked by what it actually reaches in your environment, not by a CVSS number copied from a scanner. You get the report and the raw output, not a summary of a summary.
See how we testAhmedabad and Sharjah, working the same methodology on the same tooling. Indian data-residency requirements and UAE delivery are both ordinary here, and the AphelioNYX AD Pen-Test module runs entirely inside your perimeter when regulation says it must.
The platformInvent a statistic to make a slide land. Publish your name as a client without written permission. Print an award badge nobody awarded. Founded in 2024. We say so, and we attribute experience to the people who have it.
Ask us anythingAcross the globe, and across eight industries. We name a client only with their written permission.
AphelioNYX is SOC 2, ISO and GDPR compliant; attestations are available on request under NDA. We would rather hand you the report than print a badge.
Questions
FAQNext door
RelatedA personalised walkthrough and a free readiness assessment against the frameworks you are actually being asked for. Pick a time that suits you, or write to us. We reply within one business day.