Smart Firms Treat Vendor Risk Like Their Own

Artificial intelligence has opened Pandora’s box for enterprise cybersecurity. What it found was that the modern enterprise is no longer a closed system. It is a web of dependencies, stitched together by software vendors, cloud providers and outsourced engineering partners.

Increasingly, the weakest link is not inside the organization at all. It sits across the long tail of third-party software that keeps operations running. That may not be new to some executives. What is new is how fast AI can surface those vulnerabilities. Frontier models like Anthropic’s Mythos and OpenAI’s GPT 5.4 cyber model can exploit systems with little regard for who owns them, thanks to their user-agnostic capabilities.

Microsoft patched over 167 security vulnerabilities on April 14 across its Windows operating systems and related software.

Vulnerabilities that once lingered for months now surface in days, sometimes hours. Attackers are scanning not just primary targets but their extended ecosystems for entry points. In a world of interconnected systems, patch discipline is only as strong as the weakest vendor.

See also: What AI-Driven Attack Chains Mean for CFOs and CISOs

How AI Is Accelerating the Race to Find and Fix Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities

Cybersecurity has always been a moving target. What distinguishes the current moment is how fast yesterday’s best practices become today’s minimum requirements. Patch discipline, vendor audits and incident response planning are no longer differentiators. They are table stakes.

PYMNTS covered Monday (April 27) how hackers have reportedly begun impersonating Microsoft Teams help desk workers to trick victims into installing data-stealing malware. These attacks are part of a broader trend: hackers are logging in rather than breaking in.

The result is a paradox. Even as internal defenses improve, overall risk can rise because the attack surface has expanded beyond direct control. A vendor’s delayed patch cycle or misconfigured system can become the enterprise’s problem overnight.

For CFOs, this creates a category of risk that is both material and hard to measure. Third-party vulnerabilities are often opaque. They are buried in contracts negotiated for cost and speed rather than cyber resilience.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Vendors and Vulnerabilities: The Cyberattack Squeeze on Mid-Market Firms” found that hackers increasingly target middle market firms. These companies depend on third-party cloud providers, software-as-a-service platforms and managed service providers, which can leave them exposed.

As a result, the predictable rhythms of enterprise IT are out of step with the pace of modern threats. Vulnerabilities disclosed today can be exploited tomorrow. When a vendor takes weeks to patch, that lag becomes a window of exposure for every client connected to their systems.

See also: FBI Warns: Internal Risk May Outpace Cyber Threats

Why Third-Party Risk Management Is Now a Core Enterprise Priority

Third-party risk is no longer a niche compliance concern. It is becoming the frontline of defense.

As cybersecurity becomes more tied to enterprise value, the CFO’s role is expanding. This does not mean becoming a technical expert. It means asking sharper questions. How quickly do critical vendors patch known vulnerabilities? What visibility does the organization have into their security practices? How does vendor risk management rank against other investment priorities?

Data is becoming central to answering those questions. CFOs can use automated scanning, continuous monitoring and predictive analytics to get a real-time view of a partner’s security posture.

“The lagging organizations treat the data as a storage problem while the leading organizations actually treat it as a decisioning system,” Max Spivakovsky, senior director of global payments risk management at Galileo, told PYMNTS in an interview posted this month for the “What’s Next in Payments” series.

See also: Cybersecurity’s Hottest New Job Is Negotiating With Hackers

Perhaps the most important shift is conceptual. Third-party risk management is moving from a periodic, compliance-driven exercise to a continuous process. Annual audits and questionnaires are no longer enough in a landscape where vulnerabilities can emerge and spread quickly.

AI is not the only threat high-value firms face. Quantum Day — the moment when commercially available quantum computers can crack widely used encryption — has moved from distant hypothetical to near-term concern.

“As a result of the shrinking strategic horizon, what was once a theoretical, deep-tech risk is instead now being operationalized into present-day procurement decisions, product roadmaps and compliance mandates,” that report said.