Your Supply Chain is As Strong As Its Weakest Link

Supply chains seem to be making news these days, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic threw a monkey wrench into them. But physical supply chains may be the least of your worries. Here’s why:

A simple definition of supply chain is this: A network between a company and its suppliers and partners. The operative word in the definition is network, and that network is presumed to be physical. On the other hand, netsuite.com defines a digital supply chain like this:

A digital supply chain is a set of processes that use advanced technologies and better insights into the functions of each stakeholder along the chain to let each participant make better decisions about the sources of materials they need, the demand for their products and all of the relationship in between.

The operative phrase in that definition is advanced technologies. And that makes all the difference.

You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet

Supply chain attacks had probably been around for a while. But, like everything else, it took the proverbial Big One to bring the threat to prominence. In this case, the Big One was the SolarWinds hack that left 18,000 — including Fortune 500 companies and myriad federal government agencies — vulnerable. That was followed by the Kaseya hack and others, signaling the fact that there would be more to follow. Since technology is constantly evolving, so are the methods by which innumerable bad actors defeat security measures and leave your business, your customers and partners, and your digital supply chain exposed.

Does that mean you should panic? No. It means you should be prepared and vigilant.

Safety First

To determine your level of preparedness, you should perform a vulnerability assessment to identify the weaknesses in your network. Conduct penetration testing to determine how easily your network can be hacked. And monitor your entire infrastructure to detect potential points of exposure as hackers become more adept at breaching networking environments.

The bad news is, just as there are no guarantees in life, there’s no such thing as a completely impregnable network. But here’s the good news: You don’t have to be smarter than everybody else. You just have to be smarter — better prepared and more preemptive — than the guy who’s trying to hack your system and wreak havoc on your digital supply chain.

And as it turns out, that’s exactly why we’re here.