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IntermediateBEHAVIORAL
Describe a situation where a critical third-party provider failed to meet your organization’s security or compliance requirements, but the business considered them strategically essential. How did you engage stakeholders, what trade-offs or compensating controls did you propose, and what was the final decision and outcome?
Security Third Party Risk Management Specialist III
General

Sample Answer

At my last company, our marketing team picked a cloud analytics vendor that drove a 15% lift in conversions during a pilot, so the CMO saw them as critical. My assessment found no SOC 2, weak IAM (shared admin accounts), and incomplete data deletion processes. Rather than just saying “no,” I pulled together a working session with the CISO, CMO, legal, and procurement and walked them through a simple risk heat map tied to customer impact and regulatory exposure. We negotiated a 9‑month remediation roadmap with the vendor: SOC 2 Type II in contract, SSO + SCIM within 90 days, and audited deletion workflows within 6 months. To bridge the gap, I required data minimization, client‑side tokenization for PII, reduced log retention from 2 years to 90 days, and quarterly security attestations. The business got to move forward on time, and our follow‑up review showed their control maturity had improved in line with our larger SaaS portfolio.

Keywords

Identified concrete security gaps but acknowledged business valueFacilitated a cross‑functional risk discussion using simple visuals and impact languageNegotiated time‑bound remediation with contractual commitmentsImplemented compensating controls (data minimization, SSO, retention limits) to reduce short‑term risk
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