Cybersecurity is fundamental to supply chain resilience. However, not every strategy is created equal. Information security (InfoSec) and cybersecurity professionals must understand which key components they should prioritize.
1. Encrypted Proprietary and Sensitive Data
Supply chains have many moving parts. Between the suppliers, manufacturers, warehouses, drivers and retailers, there are often hundreds — if not thousands — of apps, devices, storage systems, software, and networks. Since this digital landscape is so massive, InfoSec professionals sometimes lose datasets to corruption, deletion or theft without realizing it.
One survey found 26% of organizations believe data loss has occurred but lack the resources and knowledge to verify their assumption. In these cases, encryption is invaluable.
Encrypting data makes it indecipherable. Only someone with the decryption key can decode it. Homomorphic encryption is great for supply chains because ciphertext remains usable despite being unreadable.
2. A Human-in-the-Loop Security Framework
Having a human in the loop means involving a person in a machine’s decision-making process. Even though the tool works automatically, they provide expertise, correction and feedback to ensure no mistakes are made.
As more logistics companies incorporate solutions like artificial intelligence and robot process automation into their workflows, a human-in-the-loop framework becomes increasingly vital. Unlike machines, people can be creative and think with nuance.
3. Visibility Into the Extended Supply Network
Even though supply chains are large, many businesses lack data visibility. Few organizations see into their Tier 1 supplier’s performance, meaning they lack insight into the company that directly supplies their final product.
When securing logistics processes, transparency is critical. Do employees use apps the information technology (IT) department has yet to approve? How many different software-as-a-service apps do third parties use? Are audits completed on time or at all? A brand that can’t answer these questions invites insider threats and cybercriminals.
4. Robust Incident Response Mechanisms
Cybersecurity teams should be trained and tested on their incident response approach. Even something as minor as not discounting a suspicious log can help them identify indicators of compromise early on, limiting the cyberattack’s impact.
5. Honeypots to Lure, Trap and Assess Threats
A honeypot is a decoy system, network, or server meant to attract and trap bad actors, luring them away from legitimate targets like sensitive files or employee credentials. Although deploying one isn’t an industry standard practice, it can help InfoSec manage the vast digital landscape associated with logistics.
As a bonus, honeypotting helps security professionals understand the attacker’s motives, strategies and skills. The more they know about what they’re up against, the easier it will be to increase the strategy’s resilience.
6. A Zero-Trust Architecture or Principles
Zero-trust architecture is a security framework that assumes no device or person can be trusted, regardless of whether they are already connected to the network. It requires continuous verification and authentication.
Businesses should implement an arguably extreme framework like zero trust because not doing so can get expensive. In 2023, the global average breach cost surpassed $4 million per incident, which is a 15% increase from 2020. It doesn’t matter whether a breach occurs because of a mistake or a malicious insider — the company still has to pay.
A zero-trust approach is practical. Say a truck driver accidentally leaves their work device behind, or a warehouse manager leaves their laptop unlocked. Suddenly, those trusted technologies become liabilities. Stolen credentials, data theft and tampering become very real possibilities. However, if the enterprise uses zero-trust architecture, an unrecognized location or multi-factor authentication will stop the malicious actor from logging in.
7. Categorization-Based Risk Management
Businesses should conduct regular risk assessments, categorizing vendors, datasets and internal roles by risk level. For example, they could assign the high-risk label to warehouse managers who can access, control and modify critical information. They can use their results to inform their incident response and risk management strategies.
8. Penetration Testing and Purple Teaming
Penetration testing is an authorized simulated cyberattack. The goal is to see what kind of damage a bad actor could do, enabling them to fortify systems proactively.
Purple teaming is similar. The main difference is the hired cybersecurity professionals are in charge of both the offensive and defensive strategies. This effectively simulates a real-world cyberattack and can help them develop creative defenses.
Penetration testing and purple teaming are important because hacks and breaches happen often in this field. In 2023, around 2,769 entities were impacted by a supply chain cyberattack — the highest number recorded since 2017. Since they managed multiple organizations’ data, each incident had far-reaching consequences.
9. Compliance With Security and Privacy Laws
Paying attention to changes in privacy and security legislation enables InfoSec to go above and beyond the minimum compliance rules. This way, they can increase their strategy’s resilience while staying ahead of potential updates.
10. Strategic Vendor and Partner Diversification
Diversification is great because it prevents data loss in the event of glitches or natural disasters. However, it can reduce visibility, making shadow IT — unapproved software, hardware or cloud services — more likely. The InfoSec team can’t secure what they don’t know about.
According to IBM, 40% of the breaches in 2024 involved information stored across multiple environments, including on-premises and in the cloud. On average, IT teams took 283 days to identify and contain them. In over 33% of cases, shadow data was involved.
Strategically diversifying partners and third parties to minimize risk requires routine audits. A robust log-monitoring approach involving automation can help cybersecurity professionals stay on top of large workloads.
Increasing Supply Chain Resilience With Cybersecurity
While implementing these 10 key components of a resilient supply chain security strategy takes time and effort, the investment is worth it. Even if overhauling the existing system is expensive, doing so is much more affordable than responding to and recovering from a breach.
As the Features Editor at ReHack, Zac Amos writes about cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and other tech topics. He is a frequent contributor to Brilliance Security Magazine.
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