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V0.1 CONCEPT NOTE

The Fourth-Party Disposition Protocol

Version 0.1 concept note on vendor and third-party risk governance.

All concept notesFramework library
Concept Note5 topicsVendor Governance

Topics in this research area

01
The Vendor Reassessment Lifecycle
The phases and triggers that should force a vendor review before an audit does.
→02
The Subprocessor Drift Map
Surfacing what changed beneath a vendor since the original assessment.
→03
The Fourth-Party Disposition Protocol
The decision path from detected drift to a formal disposition.
→04
The Vendor Authorization Record
Named owner, authorized scope, review date, and triggers, in one document.
→05
The Organizational Vendor-Governance Maturity Model
A diagnostic for actual vendor reassessment discipline versus stated policy.
→

v0.1 concept note. Full framework treatment forthcoming.

Disambiguation

Distinct from the Disposition Protocol, which converts an internal governance signal into a formal decision. This is the same discipline applied to a vendor relationship, where the signal originates outside the organization's own telemetry.

What an organization does once drift is found: the decision path from a detected change to a formal disposition, re-authorize at an amended scope, restrict, or terminate, with a named owner and a recorded rationale.

Published August 2, 2026.

Published under CC BY 4.0. Free to reproduce, adapt, translate, and use commercially, including inside your own governance program, with attribution to Sougata Roy and a link to this page. Attribution is a condition of the license. Claiming authorship is not attribution. Full terms at sougataroy.com/rights

Cite this framework

Sougata Roy, "The Fourth-Party Disposition Protocol", Version 0.1, August 2, 2026, https://sougataroy.com/frameworks/vendor-governance/fourth-party-disposition-protocol