Vendor & Third-Party Risk Management 

Your legal responsibility for personal data does not end when that data leaves your internal servers. Under frameworks like the GDPR and the 2026 CCPA/CPRA standards, businesses are often held liable for the privacy failures of the vendors they hire. GRC Privacy Solutions helps you move beyond "handshake agreements" by establishing a formal Vendor Risk Management (VRM) program. We assist in identifying every third party that touches your sensitive data—from cloud storage providers to marketing analytics firms—ensuring there are no "blind spots" in your data lifecycle.

​

Not all vendors pose the same level of risk; a janitorial service with no network access requires a different level of scrutiny than a SaaS platform processing customer payments. We implement a risk-based tiering system that allows you to focus your resources where they matter most. Our process includes conducting deep-dive privacy assessments and reviewing SOC 2 reports or ISO certifications to verify that your partners maintain "reasonable security" as defined by modern statutes. By vetting vendors before they are onboarded, we help you avoid the high cost of migrating away from a non-compliant partner later.

 

A key requirement of the 2026 privacy landscape is the presence of specific mandatory clauses in vendor contracts. We work with you to draft and implement Data Protection Agreements (DPAs) and Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) that clearly define data usage limits, breach notification timelines, and "right to audit" provisions. These contracts act as your primary legal defense, ensuring that your vendors are contractually obligated to assist you in fulfilling consumer rights requests and are prohibited from "selling" or "sharing" your data outside of the specific services they provide.

 

Privacy risk is dynamic, not a "one-and-done" checklist. A vendor that was secure last year may have suffered a change in leadership, a security incident, or a shift in data processing practices today. GRC Privacy Solutions provides ongoing monitoring strategies to track your vendors' performance throughout the relationship. Furthermore, we establish secure offboarding protocols to ensure that when a partnership ends, your data is definitively deleted or returned, preventing "data residue" from becoming a future liability.