Why Protecting Your Supply Chain is Essential in the Digital Age?
A security breach in the supply chain software used for managing logistics can have serious consequences, such as the theft of sensitive data, disruption of operations, and loss of trust from customers and partners. Ensuring the supply chain software security is, therefore, critical to protecting the integrity and reliability of the entire supply chain.
Click Studios Pty Ltd is an Australia-based software product engineering company specializing in producing a secure Enterprise Password Management solution called Passwordstate.
ClickStudio announced a significant supply chain software security breach in 2021; As per the reports, the attackers gained access to Passwordstate’s update server, which is hosted on a 3rd party CDN. A customer who updated the application during that time unknowingly also downloaded the malicious software DLL.
The malicious software also decrypted the stored data in the customer’s SQL database with the help of the encryption keys hosted on the web server’s filesystem. Since the Passwordstate software does not utilize client-side encryption, the cyber-attacker was able to decrypt the entire database and steal the plaintext data from the attacker’s server.
Supply Chain Security Risks: Rising Number of Attacks
The year 2021 saw a rise in supply chain security risks. The overall number of attacks grew by 300% compared with 2020. In addition, a study of 1000 CIOs revealed that 82% believe that their organizations are vulnerable to cyberattacks targeting software supply chains.
A recent survey by Anchore found that the supply chain attacks targeted three out of five companies in 2021. Only 38% of the companies reported that the attacks did not impact them in 2021.
More than 54% of companies consider supply chain security management their top priority. Container security is among the top security concerns for 44% of organizations. 89% identified containers’ vulnerabilities as a significant or somewhat significant challenge.
Read More: Supply Chain Software Market Size, Growth, and Trends
The Importance of Supply Chain Software Security
Supply chain software security is now more important than before because of the increasing reliance on software in supply chain management and the potential consequences of supply chain software security breaches.
A security breach in the software used for these processes could have serious consequences, such as the theft of sensitive data, disruption of operations, and loss of trust from customers and partners. Here’s why adopting better supply chain security solutions is essential now –
- Data Breaches
- The hackers may try to access sensitive, confidential, or protected data stored within supply chain software systems, such as financial or business information. The data is compromised without the knowledge or consent of the data owner or controller.
- Data breaches can have severe consequences for individuals and organizations, including loss of sensitive information, financial loss, damage to reputation, and legal liabilities.
- Reliable software supply chain security solutions help by extending security measures such as encryption, authentication, and access controls to block data from unauthorized access.
- System Disruptions
- Cyber attacks on supply chain software systems often hamper operations, leading to delays and other problems. The disruption affects the flow of goods and information through the supply chain and causes delays and disruptions.
- The altering or deleting of orders, invoices, or other vital information can lead to incorrect or incomplete data being used to make decisions, hindering the flow of goods and services.
- Therefore organizations need to take support of good product engineering solutions that can ensure continuity of operations during such attacks.
- Intellectual Property Theft
- A miss in adopting robust supply chain security standards can open gates for hackers to steal intellectual property, such as trade secrets or proprietary information, that is stored within supply chain software systems.
- Malware attacks, hacking or insider elements can target IP through cyberattacks, as it often contains sensitive and valuable information about the organization’s products, processes, and technologies.
- Organizations need to have a supply chain security management system that helps them protect their IP and other critical information necessary to manage the flow of operations and competitiveness.
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Conclusion
Supply chain software security is important now because of the increasing reliance on software product engineering services in supply chain management and the potential consequences of supply chain software security breaches.
With the spread of connected devices and the Internet of Things (IoT), supply chain software is being used to manage and track the movement of goods, manage inventory and logistics, and communicate with suppliers and customers. As a result, a security breach in the software used for these processes could have serious consequences.
Ensuring the security of supply chain software is, therefore, critical to protecting the integrity and reliability of the entire supply chain. Therefore, organizations must ensure proper supply chain security best practices for timely identifying and reporting potential threats.
