WARREN, NJ–(Marketwired – Sep 13, 2017) – Prevalent, Inc., the leader in Third-Party Risk Management and Vendor Threat Intelligence, today announced the appointment of Brenda Ferraro as Senior Director, Networks and Shared Services®. In this new role, Brenda will work closely with Prevalent’s healthcare, legal, financial, and higher education vertical networks to provide collaborative and economical solutions. In addition, she will continue to grow Prevalent’s vertical networks portfolio into sectors particularly vulnerable to third party risk.

The regulated healthcare industry, with its valuable Protected Health Information (PHI), is one of the most highly targeted sectors for data breaches and hacks. According to a recent Ponemon study, 89% of surveyed healthcare organizations experienced a data breach over the last two years, costing the industry an estimated $6.2 billion dollars. As much as 63% of all data breaches now occur through third party suppliers.

“The recent WannaCry attack, which compromised the availability of emergency rooms, medical devices and other urgent care resources across the world, was a stark reminder that cybersecurity breaches in the healthcare sector can be literally a matter of life or death,” said Jonathan Dambrot, Prevalent CEO and Co-Founder. “With a vendor ecosystem that encompasses more than 480,000 entities of all sizes and maturity, the healthcare industry needs to work together to better manage third and fourth party risk. We’re thrilled to have Brenda join our team and leverage her real-world experience and passion to help industry communities such as healthcare build best practices for their risk universe.”

Brenda offers an impressive track record of accomplishments in third-party risk management, governance, compliance and operational process improvement. Most recently, she was the Director of Global Security at Aetna, where she created and implemented Aetna’s ground-breaking Third-Party Risk Governance program. In addition to establishing a comprehensive risk assessment and remediation program at Aetna, Brenda also raised industry awareness of third-party risk through executive speaking engagements at CISO, H-ISAC and healthcare summits across the country. Prior to Aetna, Brenda implemented controls, standardization, process improvements, and metrics and governance programs at Arrowhead Healthcare Center, and at financial services companies including PayPal and Charles Schwab.

“I’m honored to join Prevalent and leverage my large scale healthcare risk management experience so that all sectors can better understand and more effectively manage their vendor communities,” said Brenda Ferraro. “Prevalent’s ground-breaking industry networks offer a simple and affordable single solution ecosystem that breaks through the complexities of third party risk management. I look forward to my role as change agent and evangelist to bring together industries that share the same third-party risk management concerns and goals.”

Read official press release here http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/prevalent-appoints-healthcare-risk-management-expert-to-senior-leadership-team-2233454.htm