Establish and Maintain an Inventory of Service Providers

The organization must maintain a list of partners who have access to confidential information. System vendors and processors of personal data are listed separately from other stakeholders because they play an active role in the processing of data.

The organization has defined the certifications or standards required of key partners. Commonly recognized standards related to cyber security include:

• ISO 27001 (information security management system)
• SOC2 (general security, also called SSAE 16)
• ISO 27701 (data protection management system)
• ISO 27017 (cyber security in cloud services) or ISO 27018 (data protection in cloud services)
• other popular e.g. NIST (general), CSA (cloud software), PCI DSS (card payments and data)

Certifications required from partners can make organization's own partner management more efficient and provide good evidence of a particular level of security or privacy of the partner.

The organization shall identify

• the stakeholders relevant to the security management system
• the security requirements set by these stakeholders

Data system providers and personal data processors are treated through separate tasks.

The organization must clearly document all the digital services it provides to its customers according to the cloud service model.

The documentation for digital services must include the partners involved in the service supply chain. The partner listing must include supporting services (such as IaaS, such as AWS or MS Azure), other partners included in the main service provider's supply chain (such as outsourced development), and other services that complement the actual service (including IDaaS, CDN).

In the future, supply chain documentation can be used to review a more detailed division of safety responsibilities.

The processing agreement binds the actions of the data processor (such as the system vendor).

It can be important for us to ensure an important partner takes responsibility of e.g. access control (logging) and data recovery at the end of the contract according to our preferred policies.