Clarifying intellectual property ownership is the correct primary element a procurement team should confirm to satisfy vendor security obligations during the contracting lifecycle.

Confirming who owns intellectual property and what licenses are granted ensures the buyer has the legal rights to use, modify, patch, and sustain products and code when security issues arise. Clear ownership and licensing terms determine whether the organization can require fixes, perform independent security testing, or obtain source code under escrow if needed. These rights are foundational because they define the remedies and responsibilities for vulnerability remediation, incident response, and long term maintenance.

Establishing a code escrow arrangement is useful as a continuity and recovery mechanism, but it presupposes that IP ownership and licensing issues are addressed first. Escrow is a mitigation rather than the primary contractual element that establishes who may exercise rights over the software.

Validating cloud IAM and service account configurations is an important technical control and part of security assessments and operational reviews, but it is not the central contracting element that defines vendor obligations and rights. Those technical validations are typically specified or tested after contractual ownership and license terms are set.

Continuous user activity monitoring capabilities relate to operational logging and detection requirements and can be included as service level or security requirements, but they do not replace the need to clarify intellectual property ownership. Monitoring is a control for detection and response and does not by itself give the organization legal rights to modify or sustain vendor deliverables.

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