Chaining of Security Requirements
Managing your vendor supply chain involves overseeing all links in the chain. The vulnerability of one link affects the entire chain. Therefore, chain security encompasses all risk management, security, and cybersecurity measures necessary to protect your company’s supply chain against vulnerabilities.
Stages of Supply Chain Security Management
Identify, Analyze, Assess, and Manage Vendor Security Risks
- Identify threats, evaluate risks, manage, and treat vendor risks
- Consider applicable legal and regulatory requirements related to threats and risks.
Preparation for Security Incidents and Emergencies
- Properly manage failures, incidents, and other security-related issues related to the delivered services
- Implement access controls to facilities and information resources.
Threat Identification and Risk Mitigation
- Identify threats to supply chain security, assess their risks, and mitigate their consequences.
- Prevent interference in supply chains from security threats.
Establish Preventive Measures into your Vendor-oriented Processes:
- Establishing due diligence in vendor selection processes
- setting minimum requirements in vendor contracts
Continuous Improvement:
- Ensure the continuous improvement of the Security Management process for the supply chain.
Software supply chain security management
Managing your software supply chain includes overseeing all of the links in the chain, from open source code to software licensed from third-party vendors to code developed by in-house teams. It also includes managing the systems, infrastructure and processes used across your SDLC. Looking at software supply chain management through a security lens can help protect your organization from malicious attacks.
Cyberthreats and supply chain security
- Cyberthreats have recently come to the top of supply chain security worries. Malware assaults, piracy, illegal ERP access, and unintended or intentionally introduced backdoors in the commercial, open-source, or proprietary software used by enterprises are all examples of cyberthreats.
- In this case, supply chain security largely entails avoiding risks associated with employing software built by another company and securing organizational data accessed by a third party in your supply chain. It is impossible for businesses to assume that the software they use or acquire is secure.
- Because close communication between firms, suppliers, and resellers is frequently required, computer networks may get interwoven, and sensitive data may be shared. As a result, a breach at one organization could affect many others. Instead of direct targeting, hackers may target a weaker organisation in the target’s supply chain to achieve their objectives.
- The response of many companies to such attacks is limiting their dependence on overseas suppliers and focusing on supply networks in their country. Other businesses are shifting output from international manufacturers to domestic ones.
- For example, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has produced a server product line that relies on a trusted supply chain for all of its parts. Furthermore, by 2022, the Chinese government has mandated that its ministries cease utilizing foreign-made hardware and software.
Importance of supply chain security
Businesses must prioritize supply chain security over others since a compromise in their systems could interrupt their operations. Supply chain vulnerabilities can result in extra costs, delivery inefficiencies, and loss of intellectual property. Furthermore, they must afraid of lawsuits in the case of delivering unapproved or faulty products.
The protection of supply chains from both physical and cyber threats can be achieved with the use of security management systems. While threats cannot be totally eliminated, supply chain security can help to provide a more secure, efficient flow of commodities that can quickly recover from interruptions.