Cyber risk no longer sits only in production systems. It can also live in the development, testing and deployment processes—and in the permissions and dependencies that let those processes move quickly. For security leaders and boards, the question is not only “are our systems secure?” but “where does risk now live within the business?”
Why security boundaries need to include processes
Production systems remain important, but they are not the whole picture. Teams build, test and deploy software through processes designed for speed and collaboration. Automated triggers and access permissions can be part of those processes, and broad permissions or weaker oversight can make them consequential even when the production environment itself appears well protected.
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As Serkan Cetin, identified as Head of Solutions Engineering for Tenable Australia & New Zealand, puts it: “Cyber risk is no longer just about keeping attackers out; it’s also about understanding how trusted processes can be used in unintended ways.” A trusted workflow is not automatically a safe workflow: its access, dependencies and ability to affect business operations also matter.
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A weakness in a software development or deployment pipeline can affect more than the organisation operating it. If that pipeline influences software supplied to other organisations, an exposure can travel downstream to those organisations and, ultimately, their customers. That is why software supply-chain risk is a business concern as well as a technical one.
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KBI.Media reported a Gartner prediction that 45% of organisations would experience an attack on their software supply chain by 2025. This is a prediction attributed to Gartner, not a confirmed rate of attacks that occurred in 2025; the original Gartner publication and its publication year were not established in the available source material. The figure should therefore be read as a warning about anticipated exposure, not as a measured outcome.
Why alert counts do not explain business risk
A dashboard can show alerts, incidents and vulnerability counts without showing how an exposure connects to a critical business function. A count tells leaders something about volume; by itself, it does not explain what could fail, how much the failure matters, or whether the organisation can continue operating.
Translate technical exposure into a business scenario. For each significant process, vendor or dependency, ask:
- What trusted process or dependency could fail or be misused?
- Which business function relies on it, and what loss could follow?
- What permissions or controls could prevent, limit or detect the problem?
- Is there redundancy or another response option if the dependency becomes unavailable?
This framing gives executives a way to discuss exposure in terms of business impact and available choices, rather than treating every alert as equally important.
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Assess vendors by the dependency they create
A vendor’s technical rating or completed questionnaire is only part of a third-party risk assessment. The more useful question is how the organisation depends on that vendor and what consequences would follow if the vendor were disrupted or compromised. SAFE, a provider of third-party cyber-risk services, describes an approach that considers scenario likelihood and financial impact alongside connectivity, redundancy and prioritisation. Its guidance is a vendor-authored example, not independent validation of a universal method.
Those considerations can help shape a proportionate review:
- Business context: Identify the function that relies on the vendor and the consequences of disruption.
- Loss scenarios: Describe plausible failures or misuse in terms of operational or financial impact.
- Likelihood and impact: Consider both how plausible a scenario is and how damaging it would be.
- Connectedness and redundancy: Map the vendor’s connections to internal operations and determine whether alternatives exist.
- Tiering and mitigation: Prioritise vendors according to their business importance and apply mitigations proportionate to their exposure.
- Monitoring: Decide whether the dependency warrants periodic review or more continuous monitoring.
SAFE’s article also contrasts a 300-question questionnaire with an example of a 3–10 question intake. These figures describe examples in SAFE’s own vendor-authored guidance; they are not general findings about how organisations assess suppliers. The broader lesson is to focus review effort on business dependency and plausible loss, not questionnaire length alone.
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Put the risk picture where decisions are made
Security and risk teams can make discussions more useful by connecting systems, processes and external dependencies to the business functions they support. That connection helps leaders see why an automated workflow or supplier access path deserves attention, what the consequences might be, and whether permissions, controls, redundancy or response plans would change the outcome.
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The result is a more decision-oriented view of cyber risk: not simply whether a system has an alert, but where exposure sits in the business, what it could affect, and which action would reduce the resulting risk.
Quick Recap
Sources
- KBI.Media, “Looking for cyber risk in the wrong places”. The available article listing gives a September 21 publication date, but its year is not independently confirmed.
- SAFE, third-party cyber-risk assessment guidance. SAFE is the vendor describing its own approach.
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