Evaluating Human Factors in Third-Party Services in Banking Sector

The purpose of this paper was to contextualize the impact of the human factor owing to the increased involvement of third-party vendors by banks and other financial services providers and the rising threat level of supply chain attacks. On this, this paper presents a literature review of the risks posed by third party vendors within the present-day cyber environment including an evaluation of two core supply chain attacks, namely, Carbanak attack and the Equifax data breach. From these, it is established that with the increased prevalence and utilization of third-party vendors in banking and financial service provision, there is a need to integrate third-party risk management by addressing the key risks that emanate from the contracting organizations’ activities and relationships with the third-party vendors, and those posed by practices adopted by third-party vendors. To this, it has been established that while they are both independent organizations, there is a need to adopt an integrated framework that brings together strategy, processes, technology, and people dimensions associated with the human factor risk in the cyber environment.