In this era of digitalization, the importance of business ecosystems has grown to another level. Moreover, companies no matter in which sector or industry they operate, they have to collaborate with their suppliers.
Why Supply Chains Are Today’s Fastest Growing Cybersecurity Threat
But, the situation gets tricky when any company’s suppliers do not abide by cybersecurity regulations and become targets of hackers, identity thieves, and other cyber goons.
Frankly speaking, it takes only a few minutes to bring a well established and well paced business to its knees if any supplier is vulnerable to different cybersecurity threats.
Continue reading this post to know how supply chains have become one of the most dangerous cybersecurity threats in 2021.
What is supply chain attack all about?
In reality, supply chain attacks are one of the latest yet harmful cyber threats that target organizations’ suppliers, web developers, and other related people.
The main objective behind this whole activity is to access the company’s crucial data assets including source codes, cybersecurity mechanisms, etc. By doing so, hackers or other cyber terrorists can inject malware or viruses to different corporate apps.
Consequently, they can misuse any company or organization’s internal resources including employees’ communications, customers’ sensitive information, etc.
How can companies or businesses defend themselves against supply chain attacks?
Unfortunately, supply chain attacks have taken the whole world by storm. Surprisingly, supply chain attacks have increased alarmingly during the last couple of years worldwide.
For instance, different customers of Domino’s Australia were targeted by hackers using email phishing techniques. When they received such suspicious emails on their inboxes from the famous pizza chain, they contacted the company and asked for the official investigation.
According to the official response of Domino’s Australia, their systems were not attacked by hackers. In fact, one of their suppliers’ systems was attacked by a group of hackers.
As a result, hackers were able to gain access to customers’ sensitive personal information including email addresses. Therefore, companies working within Australian territory should enhance their prevailing cybersecurity practices appropriately.
If you are an entrepreneur and managing your small business such as web development, e-commerce, etc. yourself, you should use a free VPN that ensures your cybersecurity in Australia officially.
This way, you can easily protect your small business from the vicious eyes of hackers and other cyber goons hassle-free.
Why is cybersecurity of vendors or suppliers important in 2021?
As already explained, organizations or companies no matter in which country they operate should improve the security of their supply chain departments.
For that reason, they must focus on improving the cybersecurity of their vendors first in the best possible manner. Otherwise, hackers will keep exploiting the vulnerabilities found in their suppliers’ security systems in the future.
As a result, organizations or companies will face numerous types of cyber attacks at an alarming rate. Therefore, there is no harm in providing extensive cybersecurity training to all your vendors or suppliers who are part of your company’s supply chain mechanism directly or indirectly.
For that reason, they can guide their suppliers about the latest cybersecurity trends that will influence the cybersecurity of your organization a great deal in the future.
For example, they can educate them about the importance of adding cybersecurity professionals and ethical hackers in their existing IT teams. Once they add these people in their teams, they can inform them about the possible cybersecurity threats in a proactive manner.
Other tactics companies can use to safeguard themselves against supply chain attacks in 2021
When it comes to protecting from supply chain attacks, organizations or businesses can follow different security measures in advance. These measures include:
- Implement honeytokens
- Apply zero trust architecture
Implement Honeytokens
Organizations can take advantage of honeytokens as they alert them as soon as any suspicious activity takes place in their official network. They deceive hackers as they perceive them as valuable organizational assets.
When hackers or other cybercriminals interact with honeytokens, an alert is generated that informs organizations about possible data breach or other cybersecurity incident proactively.
Apply zero trust architecture
A zero trust architecture enables organization in removing the element of trust within their corporate network infrastructure. In addition, it helps them protect themselves from possible data breaches appropriately.
Wrapping Things Up
There is no denying that supply chains have become an easy target of hackers and other cyber terrorists these days. This is because they are prone to different cyber threats like hacking, phishing, malware, etc.
Therefore, companies either small or large working in different industries like health, information technology, e-commerce, etc. need to take some cybersecurity measures in a proactive manner.
By doing so, they can secure their supply chain departments from various security risks as mentioned above comprehensively. For instance, they can provide awareness to their employees about the consequences of email phishing attacks.
Likewise, they can train them regarding the importance of other cybersecurity practices like updating official devices security-wise on a regular basis, installation of antivirus or antimalware software on work devices, etc.