Supply Chain: 1047079

technologies that will be vital in the development of modern business. Diverse industries in the form of automobile, pharmaceuticals, oil & gas and food & beverage industry is relying heavily on the cyber security in tracking and tracing new orders. In 2012, the incident of Shamoon virus attack affected 30,000 workstations in an oil producer and have highlighted importance of the cyber security. The concept of product recalling, identification of tampering and counterfeit components and even supply spectrum can be easily controlled by cyber security. Key problems in the form of region of operation, shipment accuracy of goods and products, physical security, internal process and social responsibilities can well maintained under cyber security.

Supply chain risks

Most of the manufacturing industries, are facing issues in the form of faulty software that has been hindering progress in the business. Counterfeit hardware or malware are not so helpful in detecting the best supply chain management. Sometimes, the malwares gathers all the vulnerable information regarding IP address and payment gateway and transfers them to some hackers so that they can misuse the information. However, in most of manufacturing sectors, the companies must take initiative to indulge the cyber security in the payment gateway so that the data storage nodes and sub nodes can be protected. Five key problems that can be found in the supply chain management are described below.

Country of origin

Country of origin is an important for the supply chain management as the geographical location is one of the important factor that has highlighted the consequence of supplying good quality of raw materials. Vulnerable and threat exposed countries will not be able to produce high quality of goods and raw materials. Now in order to minimise the risks of physical location, cyber security can be integrated with the robotics in supplying goods and raw materials to the producers. Use of robotics will allow the raw materials supplier to have a close look on the process of supplying raw materials and even the problem of intentional delivering of tampered or counterfeit products will be minimised. Use of strong IP address will definitely allow the producers to build strong and integrated network portal (Banham & Banham, 2019).

Shipment of delivery accuracy

Transporting the incorporation of shipment of goods and services in an accurate manner is one of the toughest thing that most of suppliers thinks. Now sometimes, the problem is faced while making delivery to one of the remote location and in that case use of robots or automated machines will be highly effective. Use of robots and use of cyber security is closely related as nowadays many robots are made that are having artificial intelligence and the biggest example is Sophia. The companies should try robotics in loading and unloading of vehicles that will minimise the human labour (Blanchard, 2019).

Provision of physical security

Providing physical security is an important factor that has given rise for the development of resource and using robotics will give more security as all the passwords will be controlled by computers. It can be acted in various ways as nowadays most of the locks in doors can be opened through fingerprint lock and eye ball lock. Nowadays, cyber security and supply chain management is closely associated as with the innovation of internet of things huge amount of bulk data is being generated every day (Digital guardian, 2019). In recent times about 64% of the cyber security breach is happening and most of cyber security breach is mainly happening due to internal process that includes current and former employees.

Internal process

Internal process in the form of current and former employees play a crucial role in determining the overall contribution towards the organisations. Making deep connection with cyber security and supply chain is going to increase the overall rate of production that will immensely the industries like automobile, pharmaceuticals, food & beverage industry will definitely increase the capital resources and will minimise excessive extortions on the human resource. One of the myth that is existing in the society is that cyber threat is more or less vulnerable more on states activities but the problem of cyber security is more vulnerable for the destruction of private sectors.

Social and environmental responsibilities

In May 2017, a series of cyber-attacks took place using WannaCry ransom ware (a type of computer virus that encrypts a user’s data and only releases it when a ransom has been paid). Countries like United States, United Kingdom and North Korea witnessed loss of around $1 billion (cfr.org, 2019). As per Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the amount of money that is lost through cyber security around the globe is around $300 billion annually (cfr.org, 2019).

Due Diligence section 

One of the important factor that is lying within the supply chain management is the diligence of the cyber security. Through the incorporation of third party contracts in every business, the hackers are targeting those vendors for stealing of important information that are closely related with the customers. Incident of stealing information on credit and debit card is perhaps the first threat that cybercrime posted on common people. In order to minimise level of diligence in the supply chain management is basically consisting of 9 crucial steps.

Figure 1: Steps of successful diligence

(Source: Lexisnexis, 2019)

It is highly important for the supply chain management to identify the compliance concerns and once the corporate objectives is being set it is important to collect required level of information on the given process in order to validate the technologies. The risk management team will then scrutinise the scope of the monitoring plan and take actions against diligences that are being present within any economy. In order to increase the effectiveness of the cyber security it is important to choose perfect security that is definitely having an impact on the production ability.

Political Economic factors Social factors
Political factor that is mainly associated with supply chain management is that supply of faulty raw materials will definitely going to manufacture faulty goods and products. Economic factors in the form of loss of capital and human resources will be associated with misuse of both natural and artificial resources that could have increased the production if used in an efficient manner. Social factors in the form of misuse of communication and miscommunication false communication will take place between manufactures and raw material suppliers.

Five questions that could have been asked of suppliers during the process of diligence and the questions are as follows.

Is the software or hardware of the vendor is being reputable or measurable?

Is the mitigation of known vulnerabilities factored into product design?
What controls are being taken to manage and monitor production process?

What levels of malware detection and protection has been taken to control?

What steps are taken to check employee background and their performances?

Best practice section 

In order to evaluate the best practise of management in the supply chain management, the companies need to identify the practices that will be highly beneficial for the best and effective results. Five best practices that will be vulnerable in inducing best practise are as followed.

  • Security requirements to be included in every RFP and Contract.
  • Once a vendor is given access to the contract of supply chain management, there should be a separate team of monitoring the gaps that are lying within the security of supply chain management and minimisation of supply chain risks can be possible.
  • Taking ‘one strike and you are out’ policy will not allow the suppliers to provide counterfeit or false products that are not matching specification.
  • Purchase of components will have to be controlled tightly and goods should be purchased from reputed vendors and the ones that are being purchased from old vendors need to be checked thoroughly through X-ray.
  • Programmes and investment should be made on improving the software lifecycle process.

Incorporation of all these practices will definitely going to results in best level of resource build up and the factors of production will be able to contribute in a better way. Through the involvement of cyber security in the supply chain management is basically going to increase the rate of production (Norton, 2019).

Summary and Conclusion

In the industry of cyber security, most of the suppliers are facing tough choice in choosing the nodes and sub node that will identify the factors that will definitely going to give effective progress. In order to identify the factors that will definitely going to identify the resources. In the cyber security industry it is important to identify supply chain that will provide best quality of products and will indulge the security and data protection.

Reference list

(2019). Retrieved 6 August 2019, from https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Projects/Supply-Chain-Risk-Management/documents/briefings/Workshop-Brief-on-Cyber-Supply-Chain-Best-Practices.pdf

(2019). Retrieved 6 August 2019, from https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Projects/Supply-Chain-Risk-Management/documents/case_studies/USRP_NIST_Exelon_102215_05.pdf

9 Steps to Effective Supplier Due Diligence – Risk Management Guide. (2019). Retrieved 6 August 2019, from https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/products/lexis-diligence/ctr/9-steps-to-effective-third-party-due-diligence.page

Banham, R., & Banham, R. (2019). Risk Management – Political Risk and the Supply Chain. Retrieved 6 August 2019, from http://www.rmmagazine.com/2014/06/01/political-risk-and-the-supply-chain/

Blanchard, D. (2019). Top Five Supply Chain Risk Factors. Retrieved 6 August 2019, from https://www.industryweek.com/environment/top-five-supply-chain-risk-factors

Cyber Security Risks in Industrial Supply Chains | SecurityWeek.Com. (2019). Retrieved 6 August 2019, from https://www.securityweek.com/cyber-security-risks-industrial-supply-chains

Increasing International Cooperation in Cybersecurity and Adapting Cyber Norms. (2019). Retrieved 6 August 2019, from https://www.cfr.org/report/increasing-international-cooperation-cybersecurity-and-adapting-cyber-norms

Norton, S. (2019). Going Beyond Due Diligence to Monitor Vendor Cybersecurity. Retrieved 6 August 2019, from https://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2014/03/21/going-beyond-due-diligence-to-monitor-vendor-cybersecurity/

Securing the Supply Chain: Cybersecurity and the Digital Supply Chain. (2019). Retrieved 6 August 2019, from https://www.lmi.org/blog/securing-supply-chain-cybersecurity-and-digital-supply-chain

Supply Chain Cybersecurity: Experts on How to Mitigate Third Party Risk. (2019). Retrieved 6 August 2019, from https://digitalguardian.com/blog/supply-chain-cybersecurity