Third Party

A third party is an outside entity that is involved in an interaction between two different parties. For instance, in a man-in-the-middle-attack, a cyber attacker intercepts the communications that take place between two parties to gain unauthorized access to both parties’ data. In this instance, the cyber attacker is the third party. Most of the time, companies outsource tasks that they do not have the time to do themselves to third parties, allowing their staff to focus on more important tasks. For instance, a car sales company might outsource cleaning their office space to a third party. This third party would involve themselves with all of the cleaning tasks that need to be accomplished, so the business can spend more time interacting with their customers and closing deals.