BFSI Vendor Risk Management — RBI, SEBI, IRDAI & DPDP Ready
India's First TPRM + ASM + BGV
BFSI Vendor Risk Management
It is a regulator-driven discipline by which banks, financial services and insurance entities oversee the cyber, operational, compliance and concentration risk of their third-party providers. In India, this is governed by RBI's Outsourcing of IT Services Master Directions, SEBI's Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF), IRDAI's Information & Cyber Security Guidelines, and the DPDP Act, 2023. ShieldRisk is the first comprehensive Indian TPRM platform that maps directly to these frameworks — and adds Attack Surface Monitoring and Vendor BGV out of the box.
Where most BFSI TPRM programs break
Even well-funded banks struggle with five recurring gaps: (1) tier-1 vendor concentration is invisible because tools score vendors individually; (2) annual questionnaires miss real-time breaches; (3) BGV is run separately by HR/procurement and never re-feeds into risk scoring; (4) RBI inspection prep becomes a 6–8 week fire-drill; (5) fourth-party risk (your vendor's vendor) is rarely tracked. ShieldRisk closes all five — natively.
The Indian regulatory stack - what BFSI is expected to do
- RBI Master Direction on Outsourcing of IT Services (and IT Governance): Formal vendor due diligence, board-approved policy, ongoing monitoring, exit strategy, fourth-party visibility, concentration risk reporting.
- SEBI Cybersecurity & Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF): Risk-based vendor controls for capital market entities, including continuous monitoring and incident reporting.
- IRDAI Information & Cyber Security Guidelines: Insurer-specific TPRM controls, including DR, encryption, and vendor offboarding.
- DPDP Act, 2023: Vendor (Data Processor) obligations, breach notification, DPO accountability, lawful processing.
- CERT-In Directions (April 2022): Logging, retention, incident reporting timelines applicable to vendors handling Indian data.
Features & benefits - built for Indian BFSI
RBI / SEBI / IRDAI mappings
Out-of-the-box, with regulator-aligned reports and inspection packs.
DPDP-ready vendor due diligence
Lawful basis, processor obligations, breach notification clauses, DPO sign-off workflow.
Continuous ASM on every vendor
Daily exposure scans on the vendor's domains, IPs, certs and dark web mentions.
Vendor BGV - India-grade
MCA / ROC, beneficial ownership, sanctions, court records, key-person verification.
Concentration risk view
Detects when too many tier-1 services depend on one fourth-party — RBI-required.
Exit & offboarding
Codified exit playbooks, data return / deletion attestations, residual risk capture.
Inspection-ready evidence
One-click packs for RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, internal audit and customer assurance.
India data residency
Hosted in India, INR billing, local support — important for regulated buyers.
Sample BFSI use cases ShieldRisk customers run
Outcomes BFSI customers report
30–45 day rollout
From kickoff to live program with first inspection pack.
50–70% lower analyst load
AI-driven assessment + native ASM + native BGV.
Audit-ready, always
Evidence is collected continuously, not on demand.
Board-grade visibility
Concentration risk, top vendors, residual risk on one screen.
Frequently asked questions
Does ShieldRisk help with RBI Master Direction on IT Outsourcing?
Yes. We map directly to the Master Direction's expectations on due diligence, contractual safeguards, monitoring, fourth-party risk, exit strategy and concentration reporting.
Is data residency in India available?
Yes. Customer data, evidence and audit trails are hosted in India.
Can we replace our existing GRC tool's TPRM module?
Most BFSI customers do — TPRM is too specialised and too regulator-heavy to be a sub-module. ShieldRisk integrates with your GRC, ITSM and data lake.
How do you cover BGV?
Natively. Corporate identity (MCA / ROC), beneficial ownership, sanctions, litigation, financial signals and key-person checks — refreshed at defined intervals or on triggers.
RBI Master Direction on Outsourcing - what BFSI must demonstrate
The RBI Master Direction on Outsourcing of IT Services and the IT Governance, Risk & Controls direction together set out a comprehensive expectation. Boards must approve a written outsourcing policy. Material outsourcing decisions must be risk-assessed by management. Ongoing performance monitoring is required, with documented evidence. Concentration risk — the over-reliance on a single service provider — must be tracked at the institution level. Exit strategies must be defined and tested. Fourth-party risk (your service provider's service providers) must be visible. Customer data must remain auditable and recoverable. ShieldRisk operationalises every one of these expectations natively: outsourcing policy artefacts are linked to specific vendors; assessments map to RBI's articulated risk categories; concentration is computed across the vendor base in real time; exit playbooks are codified and tested; and fourth-party visibility comes from both questionnaire data and ASM signal.
SEBI CSCRF - vendor controls for capital markets
SEBI's Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Framework applies to MIIs (Market Infrastructure Institutions), Stock Brokers, Depository Participants, Mutual Funds and other intermediaries. CSCRF requires an explicit vendor management programme, with risk-categorised oversight, periodic audits, and incident reporting. ShieldRisk pre-loads the CSCRF control set, supports the prescribed reporting timelines, and produces inspection-ready packs. Capital market entities use ShieldRisk to convert what was previously a fragmented compliance burden into a routine, auditable workflow.
IRDAI Information & Cyber Security Guidelines - for insurers
IRDAI's Information and Cyber Security Guidelines explicitly address outsourcing arrangements: due diligence, contract clauses, service-level expectations, audit rights, data return on termination, and incident reporting. ShieldRisk's IRDAI mapping covers these expectations, with insurer-specific questionnaire overlays for actuarial, claims, KYC and policy-administration vendors.
DPDP Act, 2023 - vendor obligations for Data Fiduciaries
Under the DPDP Act, a Data Fiduciary remains accountable for the personal data it shares with Data Processors (vendors). That means lawful-basis tracking, processor obligations baked into contracts, breach notification clauses, deletion-on-termination, and DPO accountability. ShieldRisk includes a DPDP-ready questionnaire pack, lawful-basis tagging, model contract clauses, and a DPO sign-off workflow. When the regulator asks "show me the controls you have on Data Processor X", the answer is one click away.
CERT-In Directions, April 2022
CERT-In's April 2022 Directions affect any service provider handling Indian-origin data: 6-hour incident reporting, 180-day log retention, and synchronisation of system clocks to NIC / NPL. ShieldRisk surfaces the CERT-In control set during vendor assessment, captures the vendor's attestation, and tracks evidence of compliance over time.
Concentration risk - the regulator's blind-spot question
Concentration risk is the question every Indian regulator now asks, and the question most TPRM tools fail to answer cleanly. If 14 of your tier-1 vendors all use the same hyperscaler region, the same KYC API, or the same email-deliverability provider, a single failure cascades. ShieldRisk's concentration view sits above the individual vendor scorecards: it identifies shared fourth parties, geographic concentration, single points of failure in payment rails or KYC chains, and key-person concentration on the vendor side. This is the view that goes to the board and the inspection team — and it is uniquely available because ShieldRisk combines internal questionnaire data with ASM-derived infrastructure intelligence.
Sample BFSI vendor categories ShieldRisk covers natively
Inspection readiness - what ShieldRisk produces on demand
- RBI Outsourcing Inspection Pack: Outsourcing policy linkage, due diligence files, monitoring evidence, fourth-party visibility, exit strategy and concentration view.
- SEBI CSCRF Vendor Pack: Risk-categorised oversight, audit evidence, incident reports.
- IRDAI Outsourcing Pack: Insurer-specific evidence and clause tracking.
- DPDP Sub-Processor Pack: Lawful basis, breach clauses, DPO sign-off trail.
- ISO 27001 / SOC 2 Audit Pack: Same vendor data, auditor-friendly slice.
- Customer Assurance Pack: For when your enterprise customer asks about your sub-processors.
BFSI implementation roadmap - 90 days
India's first comprehensive TPRM - built for BFSI
30-minute live demo: a walkthrough of a real production vendor showing AI-driven third-party risk assessment, attack surface monitoring (ASM), and background verification (BGV) on a single unified screen, starting with vendor selection and real-time ingestion of risk signals, then live mapping of controls across regulatory and internal frameworks, continuous ASM updates on exposed assets and misconfigurations, BGV checks for identity, ownership, and sanctions, AI-generated findings with explainability, workflow routing for remediation and approvals, and ending with CRO-level concentration risk views and audit-ready reporting packs.