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Comparison

Why Your Vendor Risk Spreadsheet
Won't Satisfy Your Auditor

Spreadsheets track vendor names. They don't investigate vendor risk. When your auditor asks for evidence of due diligence, a spreadsheet with green cells isn't what they're looking for.

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The spreadsheet problem

Spreadsheet-based vendor risk management has three fatal flaws: static data (information is only current as of the day someone manually updated it), no evidence chain (there's no audit trail connecting your risk rating to actual findings), and manual scale (every vendor requires the same hours of research, regardless of how many you've already assessed). Your spreadsheet might say a vendor is "Low Risk" — but can you show your auditor why?

What SOC 2 CC9.2 actually requires

SOC 2 CC9.2 doesn't just ask whether you have a vendor list. It requires documented evidence that you assessed vendor risk, evaluated their controls, and made an informed decision. That means source-cited findings, a consistent methodology, and documentation an auditor can follow — not a spreadsheet column that says "Reviewed" with no supporting evidence. ThirdProof generates this documentation automatically for every assessment.

The real cost of spreadsheet TPRM

Manual effort is harder to pin down than it looks. No independent benchmark for assessor-side hours per vendor appears to exist; the figures in circulation come from TPRM vendors themselves — ten hours per vendor at the low end (Safe Security, April 2026), forty hours chasing documents plus about two actually analysing them at the high end (Panorays, August 2026). Those are estimates from companies selling against the manual process, not research, and worth treating as such. US third-party-risk analysts earn around $46/hour in base pay — the median across ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor and Salary.com, checked September 2026. Even at the conservative ten-hour end, that is roughly $460 of analyst time per assessment, or $23,000 across 50 vendors a year, before any tool cost. Substitute your own hours and rate; the arithmetic is the point, not our numbers. ThirdProof is $399/month for 50 vendor investigations per month, with deeper coverage across 27 intelligence sources.

What breaks during an audit

When an auditor examines spreadsheet-based vendor risk, they ask: What sources did you check? How did you verify this rating? When was this last updated? Can you reproduce this assessment? With spreadsheets, every answer requires manual explanation. With ThirdProof, every finding links to its source, the methodology is documented, and the report is timestamped and reproducible.

Spreadsheets
ThirdProof
Time per vendor assessment
10-20 hours (manual research + data entry)
Under 10 minutes (fully automated)
Data sources checked
2-3 (Google search + vendor website)
27 intelligence sources in parallel
Sanctions screening
Manual OFAC lookup (if remembered)
Automated OFAC, EU, UN + entity verification
Cyber risk scoring
Not typically included
Automated security posture analysis
Certification verification
Trust the vendor's claim
3-tier: independently verified / vendor attested / not found
Risk scoring method
Subjective (analyst opinion)
Deterministic rules engine (same data = same score)
Audit readiness
Auditor questions every data point
SHA-256 sealed PDF with source citations
Scalability
Linear — each vendor = same hours
50 investigations per month
Cost per assessment
~$460-920 per vendor
Flat $399/mo for 50 investigations

Common questions

Can I replace my TPRM spreadsheet with ThirdProof?+
Yes. ThirdProof replaces the manual research and data entry portion of spreadsheet-based TPRM. Instead of spending hours researching each vendor and copying data into cells, ThirdProof autonomously queries 27 intelligence sources and produces a structured risk report. You still make the approve/reject decision — ThirdProof gives you the evidence to make it confidently.
What does ThirdProof check that spreadsheets miss?+
Most spreadsheet assessments check 2-3 things: the vendor's website and a Google search. ThirdProof checks sanctions databases (OFAC, EU, UN), business registries, adverse media (multiple news APIs), domain security (TLS, DNS, security headers), threat intelligence (VirusTotal, AbuseIPDB), certification claims (trust page scanner + FedRAMP registry), subprocessor supply chain risk, SEC EDGAR filings, and FDIC records.
How much does spreadsheet-based vendor risk management really cost?+
The hidden cost is analyst time. TPRM vendors' own published estimates put manual assessment and evidence review somewhere between 10 and 40 hours per vendor (Safe Security, April 2026; Panorays, August 2026) — estimates rather than research, so take the low end. At about $46/hour base pay for a third-party-risk analyst (median of three US salary sources, checked September 2026), ten hours is roughly $460 an assessment, or $23,000 across 50 vendors a year. ThirdProof is $399/month for 50 vendor investigations per month.
Is ThirdProof better than a GRC platform for vendor risk?+
They serve different needs. GRC platforms manage the workflow: tracking which vendors need review, routing approvals, storing documentation. ThirdProof provides the assessment: the actual risk data, findings, and evidence. Many teams use ThirdProof to generate the assessment, then upload the PDF report to their GRC platform as evidence.
What if I need to keep my spreadsheet for reporting?+
Many teams keep a summary spreadsheet for management reporting while using ThirdProof for the actual assessment. The ThirdProof PDF report becomes the evidence behind each row in your spreadsheet — your auditor sees the report, not just the cell.

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