Third-Party Assurance
Third-party and contractual assurance grounded in the agreement
Help your firm review a vendor relationship, a customer's assurance request or selected contractual obligations. We organise evidence and perform agreed procedures so your reviewers can distinguish documented commitments from demonstrated controls.
Evidence across a boundary
A questionnaire answer is a starting point.
For firm-led work, define whose assurance need you are answering and which relationship matters. A procurement review, a customer request and contract-term testing have different objectives, audiences and evidence boundaries.
Reviewing a vendor or supplier
Examine the selected service, information exchanged, access granted and control responsibilities. Follow relevant questionnaire responses to policies, configuration records and evidence of review. Existing reports may inform the work, but their period, scope and exclusions must be considered rather than treated as covering every customer concern.
Responding to a customer's assurance request
Agree which questions require a factual response, supporting documentation or follow-up testing. We can organise the evidence pack and identify gaps or inconsistent statements. The firm and organisation approve what is communicated; preparation does not create a SOC report or a certification.
RiskAssist™ supports evidence intake, control mapping, consistency checks and draft analysis, operated by our professionals. AI-assisted work is used only where agreed, with human review before anything reaches the firm's reviewer. Analysis is not a substitute for obtaining missing supplier evidence.
Follow the information
What data moves, and for what purpose?
Privacy and data-use reviews begin with the agreed obligations, the service's purpose and the records available. Your firm sets the criteria; we help trace selected data flows and examine whether documented restrictions are reflected in the practices reviewed.
- Purpose and permitted use
- Identify the information collected, the reason it is needed and any restrictions on reuse or onward sharing. Compare the agreement and relevant policies with the organisation's descriptions of actual processing. Unclear ownership or a conflicting instruction becomes a review question.
- Access and transfer
- Review selected approvals and records for people, systems and external recipients with access. Examine how the organisation authorises a new recipient or purpose, including subprocessors where relevant to the agreed scope. Document inaccessible records and reliance on representations.
- Retention and response
- Compare retention and deletion expectations with available records of execution. Review assigned responsibility for incidents, requests and contractual notifications. The procedures address the selected criteria and evidence, not a blanket legal-compliance conclusion.
Contract-term compliance
Turn selected terms into answerable review questions.
AuditPartners is not a CPA firm or a certification body; it does not issue audit opinions, SOC reports or certificates. The responsible firm or body keeps engagement responsibility, judgment, review, report issuance and certification decisions.
Identify the obligation
Your firm and the organisation identify the contract, schedules, amendments, reporting period and parties in scope. Translate the selected terms into review questions without substituting a generic framework for the agreement. Ambiguous clauses go back to the responsible contract owner or legal adviser.
Connect the term to a procedure
Agree what records would demonstrate performance: access approvals, service records, deletion evidence, notification records or other relevant documentation. Define the population and any sampling approach, along with the limits of a document review versus a test of operation. Access to a supplier's records cannot be assumed.
Record the result and follow-up
A reviewed working file identifies the obligation, evidence inspected, procedure performed and any exception or missing record. Your reviewer decides the conclusion and presentation. Management owns supplier follow-up, contract changes and remediation; disputed interpretations are not resolved by an analysis tool.
Delivery personnel, qualifications, location and availability are agreed per engagement. Co-delivery and white-label presentation, together with confidentiality and client-protection terms, are subject to the applicable agreement. Tools, access and review responsibilities are settled before work begins.
An existing review area
DMV data privacy and MOU compliance reviews
These are reviews against the organisation's MOU and data-use obligations. Begin with the applicable agreement, relevant amendments, authorised purposes and the records the organisation can provide. We do not infer requirements from a state name or assume that another organisation's MOU applies.
Agree procedures for selected uses, access, disclosures, retention and evidence of oversight to the extent those matters are addressed by the MOU and scope. Document the obligation examined and the records inspected. Any missing evidence or uncertain interpretation is referred to the responsible team, not converted into a claim of approval or legal compliance.
An enterprise can also request a direct review of its own obligations. Policy drafting or control implementation is a separate agreed piece of work; the review's independence and reporting audience are established before delivery.
Bring the agreement and the assurance question.
For a firm-led pilot, start with one relationship or selected set of obligations. We will discuss evidence access, agreed procedures and how your reviewer receives the work.