Case Study: Tier 1 research institution achieves reduced third-party breach risk and faster vendor reviews with SecurityScorecard

Higher Education System protects valuable research data with SecurityScorecard

Tier 1 Research Institution, a U.S. university with roughly 12,000 students and 3,000 faculty and staff, faced an expanded cyber attack surface due to its open, collaborative research environment. A small cybersecurity team struggled with time-consuming, manual vendor reviews and lacked validated security insights to prevent third‑party breaches. To address this, the institution turned to SecurityScorecard, using its Third‑Party Cyber Risk Management and Security Questionnaires capabilities.

SecurityScorecard streamlined vendor assessments by automating HECVAT-based questionnaires, validating responses against real‑time attack surface data, and providing intuitive A–F risk grades for nontechnical stakeholders. The platform cut vendor review time from about one hour to 10 minutes, improved the team’s ability to perform reviews during procurement, reduced the risk of third‑party data breaches and shadow IT, and supported compliance with funding and CMMC 2.0 requirements. SecurityScorecard’s continuous monitoring and validated findings let the small security team focus on high‑risk issues and maintain research resilience.