Third-Party access emerges as a growing cybersecurity risk
Third-party vendors are becoming one of the leading cybersecurity challenges for businesses.
The growing number of security breaches linked to third parties is prompting organizations to strengthen controls over remote access.
Third-party vendors are playing an increasingly important role in the cybersecurity risks organizations face. As companies expand their digital ecosystems and rely more heavily on consultants, systems integrators, technology providers and remote support teams, the need to monitor how these third parties access corporate systems continues to grow.
According to Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), third-party involvement in security breaches doubled over the past year, rising from 15% to 30% of the incidents analyzed.
The report shows that cybersecurity no longer depends solely on employees, but also on the external individuals and organizations that access corporate environments to perform their work.
In practice, third-party vendors have become an operational extension of the organization, making it increasingly important to maintain visibility over who accesses corporate systems, when they connect and what activities they perform during each session.
Javier Fernández, Territory Manager NOLA at BeyondTrust: “Organizations need to know not only who connects to their environments, but also when they connect, where they connect from and what activities they perform during every session.”
Third parties are also part of the risk.
Relationships with third-party vendors are often built on trust. In cybersecurity, however, trust must be complemented by effective oversight and control mechanisms.
Consultants, technology providers, support teams, systems integrators and other external partners require access to critical systems to perform their work.
Limited visibility over these connections can result in orphaned accounts, excessive permissions or activities that become difficult to trace when an incident occurs.
Organizations should regularly review:
Which third parties have access to corporate systems.
Whether assigned permissions remain necessary for the functions they perform.
Whether access is permanent or enabled only when required.
The level of traceability available for activities performed during remote sessions.
Whether mechanisms exist to suspend or terminate a session when unusual activity is detected.
Visibility and control to reduce exposure.
As digital ecosystems become more complex, organizations need to adopt a more granular approach to third-party access management.
Applying the principle of least privilege, limiting permissions to specific tasks and periodically reviewing authorizations can help reduce the exposure surface.
In this context, remote privileged access management (PAM) solutions enable organizations to manage and monitor connections from employees, contractors and third-party vendors through a single platform.
Beyond enabling remote access, these solutions provide monitoring, auditing and session recording capabilities that improve visibility into external user activity and strengthen access controls.
Beyond issuing credentials.
Third-party access management can no longer be limited to issuing credentials. Establishing mechanisms to verify who accesses corporate systems, what actions they perform and how long those permissions remain active is becoming an increasingly important practice for strengthening cyber resilience.
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