In the age of interconnectivity, with businesses relying heavily on integrated systems and online interfaces, supply chains have become more vulnerable to cyber threats.
From manufacturing to delivery, every step of your supply chain can be a potential target for cyberattacks, jeopardizing your operations and reputation. Therefore, you must prioritize cyber resilience. Here is how you can ensure your supply chain stays resilient.
What Is Cyber Resilience?
Cyber resilience refers to your organization’s ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from breaches or cyberattacks.
Many factors impact your cyber resilience. A few variables include:
- Your policies and procedures
- Training and awareness
- Company culture
- Physical security
- Testing
- Quality of your technology
- Vendor and third-party management
To achieve and maintain high cyber resilience, you will need to address all of these variables and continuously adapt to the evolving threat landscape.
Why Is Cyber Resilience Important?
According to Gartner, 60% of supply chain organizations will use cybersecurity risk when deciding whether they should conduct third-party transactions or enter into business engagements. If you want to be an appealing trading partner to other members of the supply chain, it is essential that you prioritize cyber resilience.
5 Ways to Improve Cyber Resilience
Your business is using more technologies than ever. While each of these solutions represents an asset for your business, it also creates a new vulnerability.
Imagine that your supply chain is a home you are trying to protect. In this scenario, each technology or point of connectivity represents a door or window that threats can exploit. If you only have one door, controlling traffic is relatively simple. But keeping threats out becomes incredibly difficult if the home has dozens of doors and windows.
While it would be nice to have fewer pathways to protect, it’s simply not an option in today’s landscape. You cannot use less technology and expect to compete in the current supply chain environment.
Instead, you need to increase cyber resilience using these five key steps:
1. Assess Your Risk
Conduct a top-to-bottom risk assessment. Determine what you are doing right and what weaknesses may pose a risk to business continuity.
2. Take Stock of Your Threat Vectors
You can’t stop threats if you don’t know where they are originating from. Therefore, you need to identify all potential threat vectors. These include cloud-based applications, integrations with vendor technologies, and any other pathway through which hackers could access your data.
3. Collaborate With Vendor Partners
Your supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Engage and collaborate with your vendors, suppliers, and third-party logistics providers. Find out what your trading partners are doing to improve cyber resilience to gain insights for your own cybersecurity strategy.
4. Implement Multi-Layered Security Protocols
Digital threats are complex and multifaceted. Your security protocols should be equally diverse. Implement multiple layers of security, including firewalls, intrusion detection, encryption, and backup and recovery software. The more layers of protection, the better your chances of stopping a supply chain threat.
5. Review and Adapt
Your supply chain security strategy is never going to be perfect. But that doesn’t mean you should ever stop trying to make it flawless. Periodically review your security strategy, make improvements, and adapt to emerging threats.
Elevate Your Cyber Resilience With R2 Logistics
Much like the supply chain itself, your cyber resilience depends on the collaboration of multiple entities. Therefore, it’s vital to implement robust supply chain management tools and choose security-conscious partners, like R2 Logistics.
R2 Logistics provides 3PL services and technology solutions designed to help you improve efficiency and maximize cyber resilience. Connect with our team to learn more about our services today.
