Position Overview
The Senior Manager, Third Party Risk Management leads Asurion’s enterprise vendor and supply-chain risk program as a second line of defense. This role owns the end-to-end third-party risk lifecycle—intake, inherent-risk tiering, due diligence, contract controls, continuous monitoring, reassessment, and secure offboarding—protecting Asurion and its carrier and partner ecosystem from risks introduced by vendors, service providers, and technology suppliers. The leader partners closely with Procurement, Legal, Privacy, business portfolio owners, and security control owners to translate fragmented vendor information into clear, defensible risk decisions. This is both a program-building and people-leadership role, maturing the vendor risk function in alignment with NIST CSF 2.0 and strengthening supply chain risk outcomes while embedding modern practices for emerging risks such as third-party AI tooling, SaaS sprawl, and vendor concentration.
Key Responsibilities
- Own strategy, design, and continuous improvement of the Third-Party/Vendor Risk Management (TPRM) program aligned to NIST CSF 2.0, ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and regulatory obligations.
- Define and maintain TPRM policy, standards, procedures, and risk-tiering methodology; secure governance approval and drive consistent adoption across the enterprise.
- Establish third-party risk appetite and tolerance thresholds with CISO and GRC leadership and apply them to vendor risk decisions.
- Embed risk gates within sourcing, onboarding, contracting, renewal, and offboarding in partnership with Procurement and Legal.
- Lead the full vendor risk lifecycle: intake, inherent-risk classification, due diligence, residual-risk determination, treatment/acceptance, contracting, continuous monitoring, reassessment, and offboarding.
- Operationalize inherent-risk tiering to scope assessment depth and cadence based on data sensitivity, access, criticality, and business impact.
- Direct security, privacy, and resilience assessments using methodologies such as SIG/Shared Assessments and evidence including SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI AOC, and penetration test results.
- Evaluate fourth-party/Nth-party dependencies, vendor concentration, and systemic risk across the supplier portfolio.
- Establish and lead risk reviews for third-party AI/GenAI tooling with security and privacy teams; address model and data-handling risks and shadow AI.
- Translate findings into concise, business-relevant risk narratives and actionable remediation plans with owners and timelines.
- Operate continuous monitoring leveraging external risk ratings, periodic attestations, threat/breach intelligence, and event-driven triggers.
- Coordinate third-party incident response with SOC/IR; assess impact, drive containment, and track remediation to closure.
- Manage the third-party risk register and findings inventory; escalate aging or accepted risks through governance.
- Maintain visibility into critical vendor resilience and BC/DR posture for high-impact suppliers.
- Partner with Legal and Procurement to define and negotiate security, privacy, and resilience terms (control requirements, right-to-audit, breach notification SLAs, data protection, subprocessor controls).
- Develop a standardized library of contractual security requirements scaled to vendor risk tier.
- Define and report outcome-driven metrics and KRIs (e.g., residual risk trends, assessment cycle time/coverage, time-to-remediate, monitoring coverage, exception aging); deliver executive-ready reporting to governance forums.
- Serve as the primary point of contact for internal/external audits, regulatory exams, and carrier-partner due diligence.
- Build, lead, and develop a high-performing team of vendor risk analysts; set objectives, coach performance, and scale capability through playbooks, training, and quality reviews.
- Drive operational efficiency via process automation and analyst-assistive tooling to focus effort on judgment-intensive decisions.
Education and Experience
- 8+ years in information security, IT risk, or GRC, including 4+ years focused on third-party/vendor risk management.
- 2+ years of direct people leadership managing analysts or a risk team.
- Demonstrated experience designing or maturing a TPRM program lifecycle end to end.
- Strong working knowledge of NIST CSF 2.0, ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and assessment standards such as SIG/Shared Assessments.
- Experience reviewing assurance artifacts (SOC 2 Type II, ISO certifications, penetration test reports) and translating them into risk decisions.
- Hands-on experience with TPRM/GRC platforms and continuous monitoring/security-rating tools (e.g., ProcessUnity, OneTrust, Prevalent/Mitratech, Whistic, BitSight, SecurityScorecard, or comparable).
- Experience partnering with Procurement and Legal on vendor contracting and security/privacy terms.
- Excellent written and verbal communication, including executive briefing and defensible risk narratives.
- Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent professional experience.
- Preferred: certifications such as CTPRP, CISSP, CISA, CRISC, or CISM; experience in regulated consumer or financial environments (e.g., GLBA, PCI DSS, state privacy laws); experience with AI/GenAI risk assessment; familiarity with three lines of defense; experience with automation or AI-assisted workflows in GRC.
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
- Sound risk judgment balancing rigor with business enablement and speed-to-value.
- Ability to influence without authority across Procurement, Legal, Privacy, Security, and business stakeholders.
- Program design, policy/standard development, and governance execution for TPRM.
- Expertise in vendor risk tiering, due diligence, continuous monitoring, issue management, and secure offboarding.
- Strong analytical skills to assess concentration, systemic risk, and fourth-party dependencies.
- Advanced communication skills; distills complex third-party risk into actionable executive decisions.
- Team leadership, talent development, and operational scaling through playbooks, training, and QA.
- Proficiency with metrics/KRIs, dashboards, and executive reporting.
- Negotiation of contractual security/privacy/resilience terms and control requirements.
Travel Requirements
N/A
Physical Demands
- Stationary Position: Frequently
- Vision: 20/20 corrected vision
- Hearing: Receive detailed information if spoken to
