Third Party Threat Hunters

Hosted by Gregory Rasner, Third Party Threat Hunting

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Latest episode

Oct 2026

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About the show

Third Party Threat Hunters is the podcast for people who manage third-party risk: TPRM, vendor risk, cybersecurity, supply chain and AI risk, and the fourth parties hiding behind your vendors. Hosts Greg Rasner and Paul Kurtz talk with CISOs, risk leaders and researchers about what actually reduces vendor risk, not just what passes an audit. For TPRM, security and compliance teams at banks, credit unions, healthcare and beyond. New episodes weekly, plus short clips. Listen, and get the Fourth Party newsletter: https://www.thirdpartythreathunting.com/podcast

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17 recent

October 27, 2026Episode 1629 min

Beyond Checkbox Compliance with Ryan Patrick

Third-party breaches keep happening even when everyone claims they’re “compliant.” So we get specific about what’s broken: the endless vendor security questionnaire loop, the false comfort of self-attestation, and the gap between checkbox compliance and real, validated assurance. Ryan Patrick from HITRUST joins us to talk through what actually changes outcomes when critical infrastructure and healthcare supply chains are under constant pressure from modern attack techniques. We dig into why standardization matters, but only if the standard is worth adopting. HIPAA and other regulations set a floor, yet they can’t move fast enough to match cloud change, ransomware trends, and shifting attacker tradecraft. We also tackle the uncomfortable reality of common assurance reports in third-party risk management, including where SOC 2 can become inconsistent, hard to compare, and misaligned with today’s biggest threats. When ransomware dominates incident profiles, it’s worth asking whether your “proof” of security even tests what would help you recover. Then we get practical: how to use HITRUST CSF within an existing TPRM program without a rip-and-replace, what E1 vs I1 vs R2 means, and how mapping your questionnaire to a threat-informed, independently validated control set can cut redundant work while improving confidence. We also unpack the quality assurance pipeline behind certification, from assessor methodology to automated checks and human review, and why that governance is the difference between a nice PDF and assurance you can trust. If you want vendor risk management that reflects how breaches happen now, this is the conversation. Subscribe, share this with your risk team, and leave a review with the question you want us to tackle next. Free field guide: The Validated Assurance Field Guide, from Ryan's conversation. Read it at https://thirdpartythreathunting.com/podcast/ryan-patrick/ Send us a question for a future episode Support the show

October 20, 2026Episode 1535 min

Beyond Cyber Vendor Risk with Jenna Wells

A vendor can look “approved” on paper and still be sliding toward a disruption you never saw coming. We talk with Jenna Wells, CEO of Supply Wisdom, about the single risk domain blind spot and why cyber-only vendor reviews miss the early warning signs that show up first in operations, financial health, leadership churn, regulatory exposure, ESG signals, reputation pressure, and location-based disruption. We get practical about what it takes to move from reactive third-party risk management to continuous monitoring and real-time risk intelligence. Jenna explains why questionnaires become stale instantly, how to use risk appetite and prioritization so you are not monitoring 8,000 vendors the same way, and how to fight alert fatigue with thresholds, scoped ownership, and reporting that points to action instead of noise. We also dig into how transparency across procurement, security, and customer teams builds trust and speeds decisions without sacrificing control. AI raises the stakes because it often arrives as an nth-party dependency inside “AI-enabled” SaaS tools. We break down the governance basics: policies and standards from the top, contract clauses for fourth-party disclosure, continuous visibility into downstream providers, and why AI risk management needs its own yardstick beyond traditional cybersecurity frameworks. If you need board-ready metrics, we cover how to summarize your vendor portfolio, event trends, and critical exposures in a way leaders can fund and understand. Subscribe, share this with a risk leader on your team, and leave a review with the biggest vendor risk blind spot you are seeing right now. Free field guide: The Early Warning Field Guide, from Jenna's conversation. Read it at https://thirdpartythreathunting.com/podcast/jenna-wells/ Send us a question for a future episode Support the show

October 17, 20261 min

Third Party Threat Hunters: Trailer

Third Party Threat Hunters, hosted by Gregory Rasner, is a podcast about third-party risk, vendor cyber risk and the supply chain threats hiding behind your questionnaires. Hear from practitioners in banks, credit unions and healthcare. New episodes weekly. Send us a question for a future episode Support the show

October 15, 2026Episode 1423 min

Change Healthcare and the Concentration Risk Nobody Chose, with Kayne McGladrey

In February 2024, a ransomware attack on Change Healthcare froze roughly 40% of US medical claims and left hospitals and physicians unable to get paid for weeks, even though most were never touched by the attackers. vCISO and author Kayne McGladrey explains why Change is still the best case study for concentration risk, why AI dependency is set up to repeat it (this time on purpose), and why "cyber risk" is really business risk with a different trigger. We cover: - Why Change Healthcare wasn't a black swan, and what the architecture guaranteed - Same outage, two labels: ransomware vs. a hurricane - Exclusivity clauses, switching costs, and exit strategy as architecture - Why a backup AI model you've never tested isn't a backup - What resource-constrained teams get wrong about TPRM - This month's one move: three revenue processes, three owners, three conversations Kayne's three free starter documents: - Business Process Catalog: drive.proton.me/urls/EE82Y1609C#yMbrqTgQ2u58 - Business Systems Inventory: drive.proton.me/urls/WX6J4G3J18#433XPCYsHNLt - Component Ledger: drive.proton.me/urls/H7PYXX9CFR#MD0LCZrlEntR Free field guide from this episode: thirdpartythreathunting.com/podcast/kayne-mcgladrey/ Kayne's book, Cyber Risk is a Myth (CRC Press), is available wherever books are sold and at your library. All 60+ workshops and templates from the book are free at kaynemcgladrey.com/myth . Newsletter: kaynemcgladrey.com/newsletter . Kayne also offers vCISO services. Also mentioned: the June 2024 CDK Global outage, when thousands of car dealerships couldn't process sales and financing. Free field guides from every episode, plus the BEACON pack: thirdpartythreathunting.com/podcast Send us a question for a future episode Support the show

October 13, 2026Episode 1326 min

Third-Party AI Risk, Explained with Shankar Krishnan

Your third-party vendors are not “adding AI” as a feature. They’re turning into fast-changing agent stacks with models, connectors, plugins, skills, MCP servers, and subprocessors that can shift underneath you in days or even minutes. That’s the uncomfortable backdrop for our conversation with Shankar Krishnan, co-founder of Prompt Armor and a longtime AI threat researcher, as we unpack what third-party AI risk really looks like when the attack surface won’t sit still. We get concrete about the threat that keeps creeping into everyday workflows: indirect prompt injection. Malicious instructions can hide in normal places like documents, emails, and web pages, then get “executed” by an LLM agent that has access to confidential data and powerful actions. We talk through why the scariest outcome is prompt injection leading to data exfiltration, how shadow AI shows up inside the supply chain when vendors enable AI by default, and why the shared responsibility model increasingly pushes risk decisions onto customer configuration. From there, we zoom out to the program level: why SOC 2 reports and standard security questionnaires still have value but fail to describe AI agent behavior, rapid model changes, or evolving dependencies. We cover practical steps for continuous monitoring, tighter alignment between third-party risk teams and AI governance, and the contract clauses that matter most when vendors can change models, features, and training practices without slowing down. We also dig into nth-party mapping and concentration risk, where a handful of foundation model providers can quietly become critical dependencies across your vendor ecosystem. If you’re responsible for AI vendor security, supply chain security, or third-party risk management, this one will help you reset your mental model and prioritize what to monitor next. Subscribe, share this with your risk or security team, and leave a review, then tell us: what’s the hardest AI vendor change for you to track? Send us a question for a future episode Support the show

October 6, 2026Episode 1226 min

Shadow AI Supply Chain Risk with Ken Huang

Your vendor’s product might be running an LLM you never evaluated and that silent dependency can become the cleanest path into your data. We sit down with Ken Huang, author and AI security researcher, to unpack what “third-party AI supply chain” really means when GenAI features are stitched together from embedded models, vector databases, RAG pipelines, agent frameworks, and downstream APIs you do not directly control. We get practical about the risks security teams are actually facing: indirect prompt injection where poisoned “data” becomes “instructions,” data exfiltration through third-party processing, and the way agentic AI turns a text problem into an action problem. Ken explains why overprivileged agents create a massive blast radius, and why identity for agents is still undefined enough that teams need to think in terms of blended identity with intent. We also dig into reward hacking and how multi-agent behavior can push toward unsafe shortcuts in the name of completing a task. On governance, we talk about where frameworks help and where they stop. We reference OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications, Cloud Security Alliance guidance, and NIST AI RMF, then connect them back to threat modeling that accounts for autonomy, indeterminism, and hallucinations. Finally, we translate all of it into vendor risk management upgrades: layer-by-layer questions about models, data/RAG sources, agent tooling, auth and identity pass-through, deployment, evaluation for drift, and observability plus options like AI endpoint detection and response to reduce blind spots. If you’re trying to move beyond annual questionnaires toward continuous AI risk monitoring, this conversation gives you a clear map and a few immediate next steps. Subscribe, share this with your third-party risk team, and leave a review with the one AI supply chain question you wish every vendor had to answer. Send us a question for a future episode Support the show

September 30, 2026Episode 1125 min

AI That Actually Helps TPRM with Brian Shaw

“100% automated vendor risk assessments” sounds seductive right up until you are staring at unstructured SOC 2 reports, mismatched ISO certificates, and a queue you cannot clear. Greg sits down with Brian Shaw, a long-time third-party risk and compliance leader, to talk about what AI can realistically do in third-party risk management today, and what it absolutely should not do yet. We start with a blunt warning: do not automate a broken process. If a question does not change a risk decision, answering it faster does not improve your TPRM program. From there, we get practical about the best use case most teams feel immediately, evidence collection and normalization. Brian explains how AI and natural language processing can extract risk signals from SOC reports, contracts, and policies, then compare sources to flag contradictions with citations so a human can make a defensible call. We also dig into the human side: analysts are not getting replaced if they build strength in materiality, investigation, mitigation, and relationship management. Then we zoom out to modern vendor risk architecture: annual assessments as a photograph, risk as a movie. We talk continuous monitoring, material events, and why context must stay connected from intake through renewal. Finally, we tackle fourth-party and concentration risk, including the uncomfortable truth that “vendor diversity” can collapse into one shared cloud or model provider dependency, and how risk graphs can help you see the real blast radius. Subscribe for more practitioner-level conversations, share this with your risk team, and leave a review with the one TPRM workflow you would automate first. Send us a question for a future episode Support the show

September 29, 2026Episode 1036 min

Continuous Third-Party Risk Monitoring with Girish Redekar

Compliance often looks like a snapshot, but vendor risk changes between audits. In this conversation, Greg talks with Girish Redekar about why point-in-time compliance gives a false sense of security, why questionnaires break down at scale, and how to spot a vendor that is drifting before it becomes an incident. We also get into governing AI agents and the privileged access they hold, how to think about nth-party risk without pretending you can map every connection, and which board-level metrics show the return on a third-party risk program. Girish closes with one practical step you can take this week. If you manage third-party risk, vendor risk or security for a bank, credit union or healthcare organization, this one will help you move past audit snapshots. Subscribe, share it with your risk team, and leave a review. Send us a question for a future episode Support the show

September 24, 2026Episode 923 min

Beyond SOC 2: Real Vendor Risk with Nivathan of SecureOS

Vendor risk programs fail in a predictable way: we obsess over forms, feel good about a clean SOC 2, and then act surprised when a “trusted” third party becomes the fastest path to sensitive data or operational outage. Greg sits down with Nivedan, co-founder and CEO of SecureOS, to unpack why traditional third-party risk management (TPRM) and EPRM workflows often measure the wrong thing and miss what matters most: the context of how your business uses a vendor. We dig into questionnaire fatigue and the trap of treating checklists as controls. A static security questionnaire can’t tell you whether a control exists today, whether it’s sufficient for your specific integration, or whether your internal use case has quietly drifted since onboarding. We walk through concrete examples like marketing analytics tools that are low risk with anonymized data but high risk when fed PII or tied to business critical operations. The takeaway is a simple shift: stop asking “is the vendor secure” and start asking “are our use cases secure.” Then we get practical about AI in cybersecurity and vendor risk management. Forget the hype about AI agents auto-filling 400 questions. The real value is correlation: pulling context scattered across contracts, documentation, procurement systems, emails, and Slack into one place so a human can make a defensible decision and prioritize the right actions. We also connect third-party risk to zero trust, covering privileged access management, identity-bound sessions, and just-in-time access, plus why continuous assessment matters far more than an annual review. If you want a step you can take this week, we share a lightweight “context graph” exercise for your 10 most critical vendors that clarifies data access, dependencies, and what happens if a vendor fails. Subscribe, share this with a teammate in security or procurement, and leave a review with your biggest vendor risk blind spot. Send us a question for a future episode Support the show

September 22, 2026Episode 826 min

The Vendor Trust Gap with Bill Haber

Your vendors are not “outside” your business anymore. When an MSP, SaaS platform, or security provider plugs into your environment, they inherit your data, your uptime, and often your privileged access. We talk with Bill Haber, co-founder and CEO of Tekrisq, about how to build third-party risk management that earns real trust instead of producing paper compliance that looks good until it fails. We get blunt about security questionnaires: why flat, self-attested checklists create an attestation gap, why yes-no scoring collapses nuance, and how branching, point-and-click assessments can surface clearer risk signals using language vendors actually understand. We also dig into what business leaders and TPRM teams should ask for when evaluating service providers, including architecture choices, back-end tooling exposure, incident readiness, and the financial risk dimension like coverage limits and breach preparedness. Then we move into the messiest frontier: AI in the supply chain. We break down how AI agents increase speed and blast radius, why shadow AI is spreading across organizations, and how fourth-party risk grows when your vendor’s “AI features” depend on external LLM providers and shared cloud platforms. We close with a practical action item: what continuous monitoring should mean in 2026, with EDR, logging, and vulnerability management that goes beyond point-in-time scans. If you want a vendor risk program that’s defensible, collaborative, and built for modern supply chain security, subscribe, share this with a teammate, and leave a review with the toughest vendor question you think everyone should be asking. Send us a question for a future episode Support the show