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Supply chains have become more complex, digital and tech-reliant over the last 10 years. And the pandemic has server to accelerate that trend. Ensuring that a smooth and seamless interaction between organisations and their systems has never been more important, so making supply chain security a high priority is essential for any enterprise looking to achieve long-term success.
There was a 42% rise in supply chain attacks between Q1 2020 and Q1 2021, according to the Identity Theft Resource Centre (ITRC), while the 2020 Cyber Resilient Organisation Study by the Ponemon institute reports that 56% of organisations have experienced a cybersecurity breach caused by a third-party supplier.
Because of this, supply chain cybersecurity should undoubtedly be at the forefront of every organisation’s collective mind and given regular airtime at board level. There are steps you can take to improve the security of your supply chain, and we’ve outlined some of them below. Let’s take a look.
The golden rule of cybersecurity is that proactive behaviour beats reactive behaviour every time. Taking steps now to prevent a data breach from happening in the first place can save you money, resource, reputational damage, stress and potential business failure down the line. Typically that begins with employee training as human error is still responsible for 90% of breaches, according to data collected by the ICO.
User error can jeopardise even the most stringent of cybersecurity measures, so it’s important to keep your employees up to date on best practices. This includes knowing how to spot a phishing attempt, using strong passwords, avoiding email mis-delivery and knowing the appropriate incident response protocol if a breach does occur.
Limiting access permission to third parties and partner organisations can both reduce the risk of a data breach and lessen the damage should an incident occur. It means that any system, programme or user across your supply chain should only be able to access what they absolutely need in order to perform their role correctly. This reduces the risk of insider threats significantly.
It’s impossible to constantly monitor third parties, so stricter access controls mean that, should they suffer a breach, you won’t be so heavily impacted.
By hosting critical systems and data on separate networks, you can mitigate some of the risk associated with a cyberattack. Supply chain management can help to counteract the reliance of logistics on IoT devices, which typically widen the attack surface area. Segmenting where possible effectively softens the blow.
Without segmentation, hackers can use the least protected endpoint to effectively access all of your business data. By segmenting your networks you can ensure that, if you do suffer a breach, the damage will be minimal.
Hope for the best but prepare for the worst. This is advice often given in both life and business, but it is particularly relevant in cybersecurity. Even if you trust your cybersecurity systems implicitly, supply chains should still have back-ups of all critical data and systems. This will help all parties to continue operations even during a breach, lessening the damage you take as a business. Remember to apply the same strong level of security to your back-ups as you do to your original data copies. You should also regularly test these backups so that you are confident they are working correctly and will enable you to recover anything that is lost during a breach.
Cybercrime is constantly evolving, meaning new threats are always appearing and security infrastructure can quickly become outdated. To counter this, supply chains must test the resilience of their cybersecurity regularly, and penetration testing is one of the most effective ways to do this.
This involves an expert replicating the actions of a hacker, trying to simulate a breach and using the results to shine a light on how your cybersecurity can be improved. Performing these tests regularly can protect you against emerging threats and uncover weak points in your cybersecurity, helping you take a proactive approach to protecting your supply chain.
