How to run a vendor risk assessment on Starch

A vendor risk assessment is how you decide whether a third party — a SaaS tool, a supplier, a contractor, a data processor — is safe to bring into your business. It covers security posture, financial stability, contractual exposure, and compliance obligations. Most operators run some version of this process: before signing a significant contract, after a security incident, or when a board member or enterprise customer starts asking questions about your third-party risk program.

What the process looks like depends on your context — a software company onboarding a new API vendor has different exposure than a services firm adding a subcontractor, and both differ from a product company managing a supply chain. The questions overlap; the weight you put on each answer varies.

Done on Starch, the end state is a vendor risk register you can actually see and act on: a tracked list of your vendors with risk ratings, outstanding questionnaire items flagged by priority, renewal and review dates surfaced before they become problems, and a paper trail ready if a customer or auditor asks. When a new vendor comes in, the intake, review, and approval steps move through your team without you manually forwarding emails. When a review is overdue, you hear about it — in Slack or your inbox — before it becomes a compliance gap, not after.