It’s more apparent now than at any other point in recent history that any business could be the victim of a data breach at any time. Everything from dating services, social networks, and even the cars we drive have been impacted just this year.

With how much data is being produced, it’s getting harder and harder to keep it all under wraps. According to research by McKinsey, just two data breaches at a large corporation exposed more than 3.5 billion records.

And the cost to clean up after a breach of that magnitude isn’t cheap—nearly $4M on average, but that’s just the monetary cost. It doesn’t take into account the trust you lose with consumers.

Customers are paying close attention to how you respond when your data is compromised. If it looks like you are trying to hide something, it’s likely they won’t choose to do business with you in the future. However, if you are transparent about the steps you’re taking to remediate the problem and prevent future incidents, trust can be maintained.

Show don't tell

Your actions are going to speak way louder than your words in situations like this. How you respond to a data breach and more importantly, the plan you put in place to assess vendors, respond to potential risks, and become more transparent in your actions will go a long way toward engendering trust with customers.

And that’s where Whistic comes into play. Whistic is the best way for businesses to assess, share, and publish security information. Below we’ll highlight some of the ways Whistic can help your business improve its vendor assessment process and reduce the likelihood of future hacks.

Automate key processes

One of the biggest challenges that InfoSec teams face when it comes to assessing vendors and responding to questionnaires is a lack of resources, and this isn’t going to change anytime soon. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, adoption of SaaS solutions has skyrocketed and it’s only going to increase over time.

Whistic helps you do more with less by automating much of the key processes along the way that have slowed businesses down previously, including initiating assessments, assigning inherent risk, engaging with vendors, and triggering reassessments.

Accelerate the assessment process

What separates Whistic from the competition is its two-sided network that connects buyers and vendors via the Whistic Trust Catalog. This makes it easy for vendors to publish all of their relevant security documentation, certificates, and audits, while enabling buyers to conduct zero-touch assessments of the more than 35,000 Profiles contained in the Trust Catalog.

Because much of the back-and-forth is eliminated, assessments are completed in hours instead of days or weeks.

Eliminate questionnaire requests

Finally, Whistic helps virtually eliminate questionnaire requests for vendors by enabling them to publish their security information not only in the Trust Catalog but also to their website. This means customers can assess vendors on their time, ensuring sales teams can focus on selling and InfoSec teams can reallocate resources to more strategic initiatives.

Jake Bernardes, the head of information security at SingleStore, put it this way, “[Whistic] has significantly reduced the number of questionnaires I’m being sent. I now only get sent questionnaires by the enterprise customers who have massive procurement teams and don’t care what I send them.”

Learn more

To learn more about how Whistic can help your business, request a demo today!