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Third Parties Rated Very Weak by ProcessUnity Risk Index are 47 Times More Likely to Suffer Publicly Reported Breach, ProcessUnity Research Finds

ProcessUnity, the Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) company, today released new research showing that third parties rated Very Weak by ProcessUnity Risk Index went on to experience publicly evidenced breaches at 47 times the rate of third parties rated Strong. The analysis, conducted by ProcessUnity’s data science team, demonstrates that Risk Index predicts real-world breach outcomes and gives TPRM programs access to data that changes how they prioritize, assess, and monitor their vendor portfolios.

“Every third-party risk rating claims to measure risk. Very few have been tested against what actually happens to the vendors they score,” said Dan Tobin, VP of Data Analytics at ProcessUnity. “This analysis shows that ProcessUnity Risk Index sorts third parties into groups, whose breach rates differ by as much as 47 times, before a breach shows up in the news, and without the vendor submitting anything. That gives TPRM teams a defensible way to put their time where the risk actually is.”

ProcessUnity data scientists recorded each company’s Risk Index score at the start of each month from June through October 2026, removed any company that already had breach evidence on file, and counted which companies acquired new breach evidence afterward. The test covered over 350,000 third parties and 1109 new breach findings. Every company in the test had submitted no attested data, meaning ProcessUnity Risk Index was calculating entirely from externally observable signals.

Breach rates directly correlated with Risk Index ratings, measured in new breach findings per 1,000 company-months (a company-month is one company observed for one month):

Very Weak: 12.36 per 1,000 company-months, 47 times the Strong rate

Weak: 3.74 per 1,000 company-months, 14 times the Strong rate

Fair: 0.88 per 1,000 company-months, 3.4 times the Strong rate

Strong: 0.26 per 1,000 company-months

Total events from June-October: 1109

Rates of breach findings flattened between Strong and Very Strong, the expected pattern for companies with strong controls evidenced by Risk Index.

The research also points to continued trends in the data that help TPRM program leaders make risk decisions. Companies with attested data and controls score highest for the internal controls external scanning can’t observe, including Network Security, Vulnerability Management, and Incident Response & Business Continuity, showing analysts exactly where a targeted evidence request will have the most impact. Vendor-specific scores also matter more than industry averages: all 37 industries in the analysis average between 66.7 and 69.7 and fall in the same rating band, so a vendor's own score separates risk far more sharply than any sector benchmark.

For TPRM leaders, the findings translate into concrete program changes. Routing Very Weak and Weak vendors automatically into deeper due diligence, scoping evidence requests to the control domains the score flags, retiring sector-based tiering, and using Strong as a threshold for lighter-touch reassessment are all actionable conclusions from the data. Risk decisions happen all inside the same solution, including where score changes trigger issues, evidence requests, and remediation tracked to closure.

ProcessUnity Risk Index is the only controls-based third-party risk rating built for TPRM. It combines control intelligence from the ProcessUnity Global Risk Exchange with external signals risk scanning platforms and CVE monitoring in a single, explainable 100-point score, with drill-down to 10 risk domains and more than 200 controls. To learn more and see how Risk Index is embedded in the ProcessUnity TPRM platform, visit www.processunity.com.

About ProcessUnity

ProcessUnity is The Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) company. Our software platforms and data services protect customers from cybersecurity threats, breaches, and outages that originate from their ever-growing ecosystem of business partners. By combining the world’s largest third-party risk data exchange, the leading TPRM workflow platform, and powerful artificial intelligence, ProcessUnity extends third-party risk, procurement, and cybersecurity teams so they can cover their entire vendor portfolio. With ProcessUnity, organizations of all sizes reduce assessment work while improving quality, securing intellectual property and customer data so business operations continue uninterrupted.

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