Organisations in Asia-Pacific (APAC) today largely outsource and integrate their IT systems with that of third-party suppliers and vendors. This often leaves the integrity of supply chains questionable. While they enjoy benefits such as costing savings, greater efficiency and scalability, it is crucial to properly manage third-party supply chain risks. Amid the insecurity in the supply chains, there’s the lack of security talent knowledgeable about cybersecurity governance and regulatory best practices, the peculiarities of modern IT environments, and keeping up with the latest security frameworks.
The situation is clear— supply chains exist in a high-risk environment – and the weak points in the systems of your vendors and suppliers are your own potential weak points. How do you identify and remediate third party supply chain risks?
Digital supply chain resilience is crucial
Supplier fraud, or vendor fraud: Malicious actors claiming to be a known vendor can request changes in payment processes using social engineering with techniques such as AI-driven voicemails, deep fake videos, and phishing attacks.
In addition to coding issues, the attack surface in the supply chains also covers jar files, containers, binaries, firmware, and even configuration files. These can lead to vulnerabilities by misconfigurations, exposed passwords or private keys, inadequate encryption, and operating system flaws. Unintended errors can introduce bots, trojans, ransomware, malware, spyware, and even crypto miners into your systems.
Mitigating supply chain security risks
Certain instances of supply chain risks can be prevented if organisations weed out risky suppliers before onboarding them. This preventive measure requires procurement, cybersecurity, risk and compliance to have a single source of truth with regard to supplier data. They also require the same set of intelligence based or digested insights as well as scenario-based assessment output to make informed decisions and to monitor on-going risks.
Third-party risk assessments at fixed intervals can help identify supply chain security risks before cyber attackers can exploit them. The challenge is to customise the assessments to each supplier’s unique risk profile. Equally important is to enforce sound encryption practices on all types of data, especially with regard to third-party integrations.
As a first step to reducing supply chain risks, you can assess vulnerabilities, identify potential threats, or just consult us on how to enhance your organisation’s security posture by signing up for our free 2-hour Security Discovery Session now.
How Lumen can help manage supply chain risks
With regard to ongoing risk monitoring, Lumen security partner Secure Forte can now connect to major ESG intelligence providers, such as Moody’s and MSCI, through API integration to obtain up-to-date ESG data and financial intelligence as well as extent of supplier attack surface exposure while conducting cyber security risk scoring. In addition, given that commercial software can contain open-source components, such as Log4j. Lumen can help deploy security controls such as extended detection response (XDR), end-point detection and response (EDR), or cloud native application protection platform (CNAPP) to detect anomalies before they compromise your systems.
Not only can Lumen help your organisation develop a sound incident response plan but we can also provide a fully managed cybersecurity solution or a managed detection and response (MDR) solution to protect your organisation from supply chain cybersecurity risks. An effective MDR solution combines the expertise of seasoned cybersecurity specialists, modern technologies such as AI and ML, and proven processes to detect, respond to, and remediate threats throughout your organisation and third-party links.
As a first step to reducing supply chain risks, you can assess vulnerabilities, identify potential threats, or just consult us on how to enhance your organisation’s security posture by signing up for our free 2-hour Security Discovery Session now.