Tom Secaur Weighs in on Vendor Reliance Post-COVID

Tom Secaur recently discussed the risks of industry reliance on vendors with Ignites. A new whitepaper from Blackrock suggests this as a potential weak spot in business continuity strategies. Firms' experiences with their vendors during the pandemic should prompt them to emphasize business continuity and resiliency in their vendor due diligence and oversight functions, according to BlackRock.

"These shouldn't even be hard questions, they should be table stakes at this point," says Tom Secaur, chief operating officer of Citisoft. But while many shops focus their vendor selection on features and functionality, "you also have to take a hard look at the company and how resilient they are in terms of people, processes and technology."

Tom added that the onus is on managers to explore how the infrastructure that is used to access a vendor's systems or data can be more resilient. "Some firms were relying on legacy software that can't even spell the cloud, and they were spinning their wheels for the first 30 days struggling to do even the most basic functions, and sometimes risking health and safety by having people come in."

For more of Tom's thoughts on vendor risk and business resilience, read the full article here.