What is a Supply Chain Attack & How it Occurs?

When an organization adopts third-party or open-source code, it can unwittingly accept an extraordinary amount of risk originating upstream in its supply chain.

A supply chain attack can basically occur in any industry, be it finance, government, or oil. A supply chain attack damages the weak links in the supply chain of the targeted organization.

A report by Symantec 2019 states that supply chain attacks have excelled by 79%.

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Many supply chain management components in organizations are poorly managed and hence are the easy target for attackers to enter their systems to expose them. Whether the company belongs to the manufacturing or servicing industry, the supply chain management of almost all the companies is open to loads of risks.

Some cyberattacks in such supply chains are simply meant to annoy the business processes but there are some which are created to steal the data or some confidential information to sell on the dark web. Either way, cyber-attacks on organizations damage rapport and ultimately the revenue of the organization, a risk which is never often foreseen.

Companies usually operate on two tiers of suppliers- Tier 1 and Tier 2. Tier 1 is the direct contractors while Tier 2 suppliers supply through Tier 1 suppliers. Given the size of the supply chain and industry, some companies have strict end-to-end supply procedures and they take care of what comes in and what goes out of their organization very well.

However, it is often observed that when these processes are new, all the rules are followed properly, but as time moves on, rules are neglected and security is compromised.

There are instances that reveal that an organization could be vulnerable to a supply chain attack even if it is guarded with effective security. The bad actors always discover a loophole to damage your system. Therefore, to keep a hawkeye is a must.

Some of the best practices to avoid supply chain attacks are:

• Document all the suppliers’ and service providers’ information
• Defining risk regulations for each type of supplier
• Monitoring all the supply and third-party activities
• Classify all the information shared with the suppliers
• Ensure all the infrastructure, design, development stage, and delivering the product include cybersecurity
• Monitoring every stage with a cyber security perspective.

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