‘Chief legal officers and their teams across the globe are increasingly involved with cybersecurity strategy, risk assessment, and prevention,’ said Veta T Richardson, ACC President and CEO. ‘It is essential to put third-party vendors through a comprehensive cyber diligence process in order to effectively manage this critical risk area. And ACC is offering the tool to help ensure third-party risks are mitigated.’

Cloud-based platform

Powered by Jordan Lawrence, an ACC Alliance Partner of more than 10 years, the ACC Vendor Risk Service is a cloud-based platform that identifies and monitors vulnerabilities related to the protection of company data. Specifically, the platform offers in-house counsel centralised vendor tracking, actionable reporting capabilities, and customisable heat maps, as well as acts as a critical document repository.  Thus, it is engineered to support industry standard cybersecurity frameworks, as well as applicable regulations and laws.

Vendor diligence

‘As many as half of all data breaches originate with third-party vendors,’ said Marty Provin, Jordan Lawrence Executive Vice President. ‘The resulting wave of regulations that require vendor diligence as well as litigation related to data breach makes this a critical service for all organisations and their legal counsel. We are pleased to be partnering with the ACC to bring the ACC Vendor Risk Service to market.’

Manage evolving relationships

The ACC Vendor Risk Service allows companies and law firms to conduct appropriate cyber diligence on third-party partners in a fraction of the time, compared to alternative approaches, said ACC. It also said that the service ‘further reduces additional resource requirements and enables corporate lawyers to seamlessly manage evolving relationships with an unlimited number of vendors and partners’.

Cyber risk keeping in-house counsel up at night

‘In-house counsel tell us what they need and what issues are keeping them up at night,’ Mr Richardson added. ‘And cyber risk is at the top. We believe many of their concerns are addressed through this product and invite in-house counsel, as well as law firm counsel, to check that out for themselves.’

About ACC

ACC is a global legal association representing more than 42,000 in-house counsel employed by over 10,000 organisations in 85 countries.