Securing the Chain: A Step-by-Step Guide for CISOs

A cyber breach anywhere can spark board-level panic.

This guide helps you keep control - of the narrative, the risk, and your response.

Cyber incidents aren’t rare. If anything, they are becoming an increasingly frequent and sophisticated threat. And when one hits the headlines, your board wants answers. Yesterday.  

These incidents can have profound implications for companies; threatened business continuity can cost in time, resource and fines. Not to mention the untold impact of lost trust and reputational damage. 

Your team is already running lean, yet they’re expected to mobilise, assess, report and reassure - often with fragmented data and limited time. 

You can control your own environment. You know what standards your team meets, what controls are in place, and where the gaps are. But as soon as a third party enters the equation, trust becomes a proxy for assurance. You need to believe that your suppliers care about cybersecurity as deeply as you do - and yet, validating that trust at speed, and at scale, is one of the biggest operational challenges CISOs face today. 

This paper offers a focused response to that reality. It outlines three practical, high-impact steps CISOs can take to strengthen supply chain security without derailing their strategic agenda: 

• Get Visibility: Maintain accurate, up-to-date, holistic oversight of your third-party ecosystem - not just once a year. 

• Focus on Data: Trust, but verify - and standardise the way you do it across your supply base. 

• Cut Through the Noise: Streamline your data and reporting so you can act fast when incidents strike. 

Each step is designed to reduce noise, increase confidence, and support swift decision-making when scrutiny is at its highest. 

Because the next incident isn’t a matter of if.
It’s when - and how ready you are when it arrives. 

Step 1: Get Visibility

You already have strong internal controls - but risk doesn’t end at the edge of your organisation. Every new supplier, and their suppliers in turn, expands your attack surface. Fourth-party exposure is real, but often invisible. And while most cyber teams are tracking third-party risk, staying on top of it year-round is resource heavy and inefficient.  
 
Immediate access to your supplier population all in one place. You’ll want to know exposure but also their preparedness should a breach happen. It's one thing to understand their cyber position but it’s another to feel confident in their mitigating controls, recovery and continuity plans. 
 

To stay ahead, visibility needs to be accurate, comprehensive and accessible - and it needs to be smart. 

• Collect structured information on your third parties 
  Build a clear, centralised profile for each supplier that includes their cyber posture, business criticality, and regulatory exposure. This not only supports proactive risk management, but also reduces duplication of effort across teams and regions. 

• Maintain oversight throughout the year 
  Move beyond annual assessments by automating the monitoring of key changes - such as certificate expiries, onboarding new services, or flagged media events. Continuous visibility allows your team to prioritise what’s changing, not just what’s already known. 

• Create an intelligent watchlist 
  Set up alerting for indicators of potential concern: adverse media, sanctions, financial distress or geopolitical movement. When news breaks, you’ll already know which suppliers are affected - and what action to take. 

You’re no longer scrambling through a metaphorical haystack, searching for potential needles. With structured visibility in place, your team can work efficiently and proactively - focusing on the suppliers and signals that matter, increasing confidence, and acting before issues escalate. 
 
With Hellios, visibility isn’t a manual lift - it’s built in. Our core questionnaire covers the full breadth of third and fourth-party controls, giving you structured, complete supplier profiles in one central platform. You don’t have to chase data - suppliers enter it directly. And with automated alerts for adverse media and sanctions tied to the suppliers you follow, you’re always aware of changes that matter. 

This isn’t just visibility - it’s visibility you can rely on, without the resource drain. 

Step 2: Get Data That Delivers

Establishing your supply chain is only the headline - the real story is hidden in the data. CISOs are no strangers to information. But unless it’s useful, monitored and validated, it can’t support confident decisions. And confidence is critical - for your team, your leadership, and your wider business. 

A consistent approach breeds efficiency. Proportionality ensures depth where it matters. And validation is what transforms claims into assurance. 

• Validate what matters 
  If a supplier claims ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus compliance, don’t recreate the audit. Validate the certificate: is it current, credible, and correctly scoped? This small step protects your team from wasted time - and protects your organisation from false assurances. 

• Go deeper, proportionally 
  Where risk, access, or criticality justifies it, request an audit. It provides richer insight without stretching internal resources - and demonstrates due diligence to your leadership and regulators alike. 

• Standardise to scale 
  Define what “good” looks like across your supplier base - a minimum set of validated evidence such as certifications, policies, and insurance cover. Consistency across inputs leads to consistency in oversight, trend analysis, and decision-making. 

Getting to this level of confidence shouldn’t require manual validation or inconsistent follow-up. In an ideal world, the data you rely on would be complete, current, and credible - not just at onboarding, but every time you check. That’s where the right partner makes the difference.

Hellios collects primary data directly from suppliers - but we don’t stop there. Every submission is validated by our locally based teams before it’s published, and we work with suppliers to ensure their documentation stays current throughout the year. That means whether you're preparing for an audit or responding to an incident, the information you’re relying on is always accurate. 

Need deeper assurance? An audit may be necessary. These deep dives into a supplier’s governance and processes can be intensive and time-consuming - especially when managed in isolation. Hellios’ pooled audits produce a single report that can be shared across the FSQS buyer community, giving the depth needed without placing additional strain on teams (buyers or suppliers). 

Stage 3 pooled audits are included as part of FSQS buyer memberships - giving you more insight, with less effort.