TruSight, the financial industry’s leading provider of validated third-party risk data, today announced the successful completion of the 2021 pilot diversity and inclusion program that provides free cyber-readiness assessments to nominated minority-owned companies seeking to provide products and services to the financial industry. The cyber-readiness program is an initiative of TruSight and five of the world’s leading financial services companies: JPMorgan Chase, American Express, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and BNYM.

The cyber-readiness program aims to break down obstacles for minority-owned vendors by equipping them with comprehensive risk assessments to accelerate their sales cycle and qualify them for more business across the financial services sector. Meeting a financial institution’s requirements as a third-party vendor is, in general, a time-consuming and duplicative process. Before joining the cyber-readiness program, many minority-owned vendors must typically go above and beyond to meet the requirements posed by each financial institution interested in partnering with them as resources for these SMB vendors are often limited – making the process even more challenging.

Third parties participating in the program receive a comprehensive risk assessment conducted by TruSight, which delivers a standardized, current-state view of their risk readiness to provide to the financial industry – cutting down on duplicative assessments and allowing resources to be focused on business growth. Additionally, participating vendors incur no cost for taking part in the program, and their completed assessments are included in TruSight’s catalog, giving them exposure to numerous major financial institutions.

“Completing third-party assessments on time is an important commercial and regulatory activity for financial institutions, but it can be an onerous challenge for vendors,”

“This program is specifically designed to help alleviate that burden for minority-owned businesses, so they can better compete in the marketplace and strengthen relationships with their financial services customers.”

 Nathan Rodgers, Executive Director, Supplier Assurance Services at JPMorgan Chase.

The program’s founding banks select the vendors to participate in the program. The recently completed pilot, which launched in 2021, included 25 vendor participants. The goal for the 2022 program is to add 30 more vendors.

“This pilot program has already demonstrated benefits for our suppliers and Bank of America,”

“Participants gain insight into their current cyber-defense readiness – making them a stronger business – and has allowed us to establish relationships with additional diverse-owned businesses that are now cyber-ready.”

                                           Bank of America’s Head of Supplier Diversity, Vonshe Jenkins.

TruSight is an industry-backed data platform developed to facilitate the efficient exchange of standardized and fully validated risk data between service providers and their customers. TruSight’s operating model, in which risk assessments are performed once and shared by many, reduces the time and effort spent by both financial service institutions and their vendors. The universally adopted TruSight methodology enables financial institutions to gain greater visibility into supply chain risk and supports third parties by removing the need to perform multiple assessments.

Vendors enjoy multiple benefits from undergoing a TruSight assessment: they gain visibility into their potential risk gaps; have a completed risk assessment they can readily share with customers, and establish an edge on their competitors by positioning themselves as fully secure and ready.

“The cyber-readiness program has been a valuable exercise for our company,”

“Being assessed by TruSight gave us benchmarks to meet and exceed on our journey to achieve operational excellence. We have been very impressed by the professionalism of the TruSight team and how smoothly the assessment process has gone.”

                                                                   Amber Kizilbash, COO of Lenox Park Solutions.

“We are thrilled to have an opportunity to participate in this industry program and diversify our catalog of vendors,”

“This cyber-readiness initiative is a win-win for all involved: TruSight can expand its catalog, which gives these vendors wider exposure to key customers and connects our financial service customers to a whole new set of accomplished vendors.”

                                       Patrick Eannotti, TruSight’s director of third-party engagement.