TPRM is undermining security leaders: 3 ways ASCS puts you back in control

Think back to your last board meeting: did you feel confident updating the CEO, chairman and investors with security data generated from your third-party risk management (TPRM) process?

In today’s interconnected world, 60% of cyber security leaders think third party supply chain risk is now "innumerable and unmanageable.” The problem isn’t a lack of effort or lack of budget - it’s that traditional approaches were never designed for today’s interconnected threat landscape. 

Traditional TPRM was created for a simpler world where suppliers were isolated entities and compliance was the primary objective. But TPRM's static, siloed and compliance-focused approach just doesn't cut it anymore. It’s not only undermining your organisation's supply chain security — but also your role as security leader. 
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How TPRM undermines Security Leaders

TPRM cannot prevent rising supply chain attacks or rising security costs 

Supply chains are now the biggest attack surface in cyber security with 85% of cyber security professionals reporting a supply chain cyber security incident in 2025. What’s more, AI-powered adversaries are using increasingly sophisticated methods to target weak links deeper in supply chains, with 16% of 2025 breaches involving attackers using AI, such as realistic deepfakes and highly-personalised phishing. 

Mitigating supply chain vulnerabilities and bolstering operational resilience has risen to the top of the CISOs’ to-do-list - with costs to match. 70% of organisations are increasing their TPRM budget - which can exceed $1 million annually in enterprise - to handle supply chain threats. But this is simply throwing good money after bad as traditional TPRM was not built for today’s risks. TPRM’s point-in-time assessments cannot keep up with today’s real-time threats. TPRM’s third-party visibility is not enough to prevent cyber attacks targeting weak nth party connections. TPRM’s manual processes are drowning security teams in endless review cycles. 

The result? You’re spending more budget and more political capital – but getting less protection. 

TPRM cannot monitor changing security risks deep in your supply chain

In our modern, hyper-connected economy, your security is only as strong as the weakest link in your supply chain. Breaches are taking place at obscure nth-party suppliers then cascading through the ecosystem. For example, the Log4j cyber incident cascaded through 60% of corporate networks with 800,000 attacks in 72 hours. 

That’s why 96% of CISOs now consider extended supply chain visibility essential for mitigating risks. But, limited by TPRM tools, only 48% map their ecosystem and just 26.8% have full visibility into their nth party connections. With TPRM only focusing on third-party or fourth-party suppliers, you remain blind to concentration risks and exposed to nth-party vulnerabilities.

The result? You don’t find out about emerging threats until it’s too late. 

TPRM cannot generate accurate real-time security data

Your supplier’s security postures are fluid, not static, so any point-in-time questionnaire is instantly outdated. Basing your board updates on data from TPRM’s annual snapshots is like forecasting your budget on outdated cost figures. 

What’s more, TPRM’s non-standardised and error-prone data collection makes it impossible to prove to the board how you’re preventing breaches. Without a unified framework, every supplier fills in hundreds of different security questionnaires for hundreds of different clients in hundreds of different ways. 

The result? You end up informing the board - and regulators - with inaccurate information. 
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How ASCS puts security leaders back in control

TPRM’s static approach, limited visibility, and lack of collaboration are neither fit for purpose, nor fixable with incremental improvements. Instead, organisations are moving toward a new approach: Active Supply Chain Security (ASCS). 

Active Supply Chain Security represents the evolution of TPRM for the modern era: a new operating model for supply chain security, built on continuous visibility, shared intelligence, and systemic risk reduction across an interconnected ecosystem. 

By moving beyond traditional TPRM's outdated approach, ASCS enables security leaders to: 

1. Enhance security and efficiency without adding headcount. ASCS’s standardised assessment frameworks and automated assessment workflows vastly reduce the manual workload (and overheads) of your security team. With suppliers completing just one security profile, your teams go from endless reviewing to meaningful risk analysis, enabling earlier detection of emerging threats and faster, informed mitigation. 

2. Get visibility into concentration risks and nth-party dependencies. ASCS’s network-level insights and mapped nth-party relationships enable proactive risk management before they become board-level incidents. By providing full visibility over your supply chain and continuous monitoring of changing connections, you can easily pinpoint single points of failure, understand how supplier disruptions cascade through the ecosystem and remediate concentration risks. 

3. Access board and regulator-ready supply chain intelligence. ASCS’s network visualisations and standardised assessment frameworks aligned to regulations provide defensible, audit-ready evidence for board presentations and regulatory reviews. Meanwhile, the continuous monitoring provides you with up-to-date information on the entire supply chains’ security posture, so you can easily demonstrate the value of the security programme to the board.

Download our security leader’s guide to ASCS
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From Security Leader to Strategic Leader with ASCS

From enabling business growth through accelerated supplier onboarding to building credibility with regulators, auditors and industry peers through proactive risk management, ASCS helps security leaders shift from compliance reporting to strategic risk leadership. 

Here’s four actionable steps to embedding ASCS into your organisation

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