How to Fight Supply Chain Attacks Growing in Numbers and Volume

How to Fight Supply Chain Attacks

Today's reality of great opportunities for businesses and other spheres comes with some hidden costs you need to consider if you want to succeed. Business owners should start from their company's cyber security and shouldn't forget that it doesn't stop at their organization itself. Any organization - big or small, private or state, etc. - utilizes the help of third-party service providers. This collaboration helps deliver, promote, and improve their services, manage workflows, satisfy customers' expectations, and there many other rational reasons (lower costs, a faster production cycle, etc.) to keep on using their services. But don't forget that your cyber security measures are to spread on them too, as you share much sensitive data with third parties. Just one vulnerable supplier in the whole supply chain is enough to say goodbye to all the efforts and achievements.

Supply chain attacks can help malicious actors compromise many different victims at once, and they don't need special targeting. Each year, the cyber security world reports more supply chain attacks affecting a more significant number of vital organizations. The strategies to avoid and fight against these attacks have become much prioritized because of the growing pace, numbers of victims and the current size of the problem.

What Is a Supply Chain Attack?

The name of this type of a cyber attack speaks for itself - hackers take advantage of vulnerable areas in an organization's or government's supply chain. And here comes a significant difference of this cyber attack compared to common phishing attacks, ransomware, malware attacks, DoS attacks, etc. In many cases, even with the most robust internal cyber security architecture and proper cyber awareness, you can't manage the risks of supply chain attacks by yourselves.

With prioritized cyber security as a common trend, more and more businesses advance their cyber protection systems to meet current demands for increased remote or hybrid work. Therefore, more companies can generally be sure they are up-to-date with their organizations' cyber security state. Meanwhile, hackers are aware of the trends too, and they search for easier ways to get what they want. Today one of the most popular easier paths is a supply chain attack. Malicious actors target vendors and other third parties an organization collaborates with, and the choice of potential victims can be huge. Here are just a few common supply chain functions: warehousing, transportation, retailing, marketing, management, finance, software operations and advancement, catering, cleaning, etc. Imagine how tragic the consequences can be and how immensely their probability increases for different business sizes or when governments are targeted. 

Strategies to Avoid or Reduce Risks of Supply Chain Attacks

Choose Reputable Vendors for Your Supply Chain

Top-rated reliable vendors or other third parties care for their reputation, service quality, as well as cyber security. It isn't a rule but a tendency, and you can't rely on their reputation only.  Ask for the cyber security practices applied and check whether they're effective and up-to-date - on your own or with expert help.

Find Out Cyber Security Standards to Check Suppliers

For this strategy, there are several paths to go. The most challenging way, which isn't always the right one, is for a business owner to deal with suppliers' cyber security standards. The business owner has to look into modern, effective cyber security standards, practices, measures, ways to protect systems and networks, avoid data breaches, mitigate risks, etc. Knowing this, they need to send their suppliers detailed security questionnaires and request for appropriate reports and summaries to understand whether the vendors' cyber security architecture complies with all necessary regulations. These measures aren't for single use, and you need to adopt such an approach to any suppliers on a regular basis to check they are always compliant with the strictest, up-to-date cyber security standards.

The most effective, cost-efficient and less time-consuming way to regularly inspect your potential or current supply chain members is by reaching out to reliable cyber security professionals like the MBS Tech's team.

Promote Сyber Security Awareness

No matter what cyber threat you want to avoid, promoting cyber security awareness is always a serious helpful strategy. The more people know about cyber hygiene, cyber threats and their negative, if not catastrophic, consequences, the more likely it is to win the battle against hackers. We're still far from proper cyber security awareness, but with prioritized cyber security and sensible preventive measures, organizations now move in the right direction. Don't forget that cyber security awareness should start from your organization and spread to all external connections and interactions. Finally, in supply chain attacks, your suppliers aren't the only potentially weak links; their suppliers matter too. 

Our experts in MBS Techservices Inc. can help build a secure and resilient supply chain as well as carry out seamless cyber security risk assessments or other services.

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