Effectively Managing Supply Chain Risks
Digital transformation has simplified inventory management and order processing for businesses all around the world, however, it has also made businesses more vulnerable to hackers and data theft. Unquestionably, this vulnerability means that any supply chain breach could affect your entire business.
Although putting security solutions in place for your company is a good start, it’s not enough. The size and complexity of supply chains have grown, making it almost impossible to find failure points or eliminate all risks.
Your company must stop considering cybersecurity and data protection as only IT issues. Rather, it combines people, processes, and awareness across your supply chain. Your preventative and corrective procedures should include supply chain risks.
Make supply chain security a part of governance
Ad hoc supply chain risk management causes confusion and instability. Risk Management can be included right into your security measures so employees know how to work with outside groups and what security steps to take.
Supply chain cybersecurity strategy best practices
- Determine who is in charge of holding vendors and suppliers accountable
- Make a security checklist for choosing vendors and suppliers
- State how and how often to evaluate and monitor suppliers’ cybersecurity practices
Next we’ll walk through a few different methods to ensure you measure progress and performance sufficiently.
Take compliance seriously
To ensure a strong supply chain, companies must follow several regulations. These regulations can be found here. The defense industrial base must meet Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC). You can meet all standards by requiring vendors to follow these regulations.
In order to demonstrate compliance, organizations must perform extensive evaluations, create reports and documentation, and follow best practices.
Furthermore, following rules is crucial. It will protect your data and ensure that your staff all follow the same guidelines. It’s important that you and your staff stay up to date with the newest industry standards since these rules frequently change.
Deploy comprehensive and layered security systems
With many third-party vendors, it’s hard to predict threats. There are too many ways an attack could happen. It’s imperative to have many layers of security within your supply chain.
Each layer of your IT infrastructure should be protected with layered security. This is a more all-around method, so even if one solution doesn’t work, you have others to fall back on.
Nonetheless, layered security is only as good as its implementers. You should train and test your staff often so they are able to recognize threats and act appropriately.
Contact us
As we have discussed, supply chains are getting smarter and more connected, increasing your vulnerability to cyberattacks. Now is the perfect time to find and repair weak links. Sound time consuming and expensive? Lean on our team at Keystone Technology Consultants to help set up multilevel security to protect your data and adhere with regulations. If you are interested in protecting your business from Supply Chain Threats, Contact Us.
