With the recent SolarWinds SunBurst cyberattacks, it’s high time that enterprises should look at the ways of mitigating the threat of supply chain attacks.
Several security professionals are re-evaluating common threat models and national cyber-defense strategies based on the recent SolarWinds SunBurst cyberattacks. For the time being, businesses and system owners should rely on the tools and resources at their disposal to minimize the risk of subsequent supply chain attacks.
According to recent reports, the supply chain based attacks is now the target of 50% of all cyberattacks, and supply chain attacks have increased by 430 percent in the last year.
For those new with Sunburst, the vulnerability affected the product development cycle though a patch rather than just the product’s security. Maintenance is required for all major applications, and it is handled through security updates and patches. These updates fix previous flaws and make previous vulnerabilities inaccessible to hackers. By injecting malicious code into updates and patches, a supply chain attack takes advantage of this dependency.
So, how can enterprises and system owners build trust while still running their own IT systems? Redefining access control, implementing a patch management approach that promotes research and testing, and monitoring their network for malicious behaviour in partnership with cyber threat intelligence are all good practices to start.
Supply chains are an crucial aspect of corporate operations, yet they are often extensive, diverse, and cross multiple nations. Typically, they will not have the same strong cybersecurity defences in place, leaving hackers with a plethora of vulnerabilities to attack.
Listed here are some of the steps you can take to minimize supply chains attacks:
Identifying Risks: Weak and stolen credentials, application vulnerabilities, malware, excess permissions, insider threats, and user error are the most typical causes of supply chain breaches. As a result, perform a thorough assessment of your supply chain partners and determine which data is shared with whom. Establish where superfluous data is shared to ensure optimum security and limit data exposure.
Conduct Regular Audits: All supply chain attacks are frequently motivated by gaining access to sensitive data. Keeping this aspect, organizations should take all required precautions to protect crucial data by determining where it is stored and who has access to it. This can help in figuring out how connected you and your suppliers are, as well as what data and systems you share.
Contracts with Suppliers Should be Secure: Instead of being concerned about security after you’ve finished negotiating a contract, include it from the beginning and be explicit about what information is needed and who needs it. Make sure that third-party vendors have only limited access to critical data — with third-party vendor misuse being one of the biggest security threats today.
Enforce Vulnerability Testing and Threat Mitigation: You can detect numerous security risks, such as weak password choices or inadequate database configurations, and mitigate the level of risk for various supply chain fragments by executing vulnerability scans.
Data Encryption: All protected client data should be stored in encrypted and secure files that are updated on a regular basis to stay up with current technologies.
Set up Incident Response Protocols: While supply chains should reduce the chance of security breaches, you must be prepared to respond in the event of a breach by having a plan in place. Organizations can reduce the damage from an attack by establishing a simple template to capture all critical components of an incident to ensure consistency, as well as having readily available forensic imaging tools and the contact data of all relevant stakeholders to ensure timely outreach.
Cybersecurity Training: Employee in organizations should have a general awareness of how data breaches occur and how they can assist in identifying threats and mitigate the cyberattacks. Employees should be educated on all areas of security, including company policies, password security, and social engineering attack methods, during awareness training.
A Brief Conclusion
Attacks on supply chains will continue to rise in cost and frequency. Cyberattacks, not pandemics, trade conflicts, or tariffs, pose the greatest threat to supply chains in the future. We must tighten our security to protect, track, and respond while automating our supply chains.