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2026 report

The State of Third-Party Risk Management in the Age of AI

TPRM was built for a slower world. Most programs still rely on fixed review cycles and retrospective compliance evidence.

Meanwhile, vendors ship code weekly, introduce AI capabilities without clear disclosure, and operate within layered dependencies that traditional workflows rarely surface.

Where third-party risk programs break down

Survey data from Fortune 500 security and procurement leaders on what's broken and what comes next.

Cover of The State of Third-Party Risk Management in the Age of AI, 2026 report
01 · Key takeaways

Everything leaders need to modernize TPRM

Teams are not struggling because they lack diligence. They are struggling because manual evidence collection and calendar-based reassessments cannot scale with modern vendor ecosystems. This report captures what practitioners are seeing, where friction concentrates, and what changes when programs become trigger-based and dependency-aware.
  1. 01

    What changed and why the old model is failing

    Traditional TPRM assumed vendors were stable. Today, risk shifts when vendors launch new products, add subprocessors, expand data access, change infrastructure, or add AI features. Those changes rarely trigger a reassessment, even when exposure increases.
  2. 02

    The data behind the bottlenecks

    Survey results show the operational consequences: 96% take more than two weeks to approve a vendor, half cite evidence collection as the primary bottleneck, and only 40% say they learn about vendor incidents before impact. Two-thirds review six or more vendors per month.
  3. 03

    The operating model for modern TPRM

    High-maturity programs shift from calendar cycles to triggers, from static documents to living evidence, and from isolated vendor reviews to dependency-aware oversight. The report outlines the principles and workflow shifts that reduce admin work while improving risk visibility.
02 · Download
Pages from The State of Third-Party Risk Management in the Age of AI, 2026 report

Ready to move from periodic reviews to continuous oversight?

Get the full report, including the survey data and the operating model for trigger-based oversight.

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