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V0.1 CONCEPT NOTE

The Vendor Authorization Record

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 a vendor contract, which describes what was agreed. This describes what was authorized, by whom, reviewed when, and under what conditions that authorization is due for another look. The vendor-relationship counterpart to the Agent Authorization Document.

A governance artifact, not an analytical framework: named owner, authorized scope, review date, and trigger list, for a specific vendor relationship, in one document. The record a vendor risk committee should be able to produce on demand, and the record most TPRM programs currently cannot.

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 Vendor Authorization Record", Version 0.1, August 2, 2026, https://sougataroy.com/frameworks/vendor-governance/vendor-authorization-record