Modern supply chains are complex and sprawling—an intricate web of suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, distributors, and warehouse teams. At the enterprise level, this interconnectivity enables the use of sophisticated solutions at scale. It also expands your attack surface. Each node in the supply chain network is a potential path to a security vulnerability, and every organization in that network is only as secure as its weakest link.
Now is the time for organizations to bolster their defenses and protect themselves from security breaches. Security is everyone’s responsibility, and establishing a cross-functional cybersecurity team helps organizations anticipate threats, strengthen defenses and safeguard their own operations as well as the entire supply chain ecosystem.
Supply chains are inherently vulnerable to cyber risk
Modern supply chains are true team efforts that involve countless different parties spanning various organizations, industry verticals, and geographies. An astonishing amount of data is shared across all these groups, and it is this data that keeps the global supply chains running. But every data transfer creates risk.
This simple fact means that supply chains, by their very nature, carry inherent data vulnerabilities. As the global business landscape grows more complex, supply chain risk grows with it.
There’s also risk related to specific industries and businesses. For example, many manufacturers and transportation providers still operate under legacy systems, which can carry higher risk due to outdated and less sophisticated security practices. And despite being a heavily targeted industry for cyberattacks, recent studies show that 70% of manufacturers still rely on manual data entry and only 34% have comprehensive system security plans (SSPs).
But when you’re part of a supply chain network with other organizations, what you do affects your partners, too. This is where a dedicated, cross-functional security team helps, reinforcing consistent controls across your business and reducing shared risk across the network.
What does a cross-functional cybersecurity team look like?
A cross-functional cybersecurity team helps organizations improve their cybersecurity and proactively assess potential threats and weaknesses. In practice, it means dedicating resources and making a concerted, formalized effort.
An effective team sets security standards and then helps the business follow them. They weigh in on security best practices, standardization, innovation, capabilities, resilience, and more. They bring together all the organization’s functional pieces to build a hub-and-spoke model that guides company strategy, partnerships and technology. Because this work strengthens organizations on a foundational level, it directly supports the continuity and resiliency of the supply chain.
3 steps to get started today
Defining success for a cross-functional cybersecurity team is simple but achieving it requires deliberate steps and decisive action.
First, understand your organization’s data. This means identifying the different ways the company both generates and transmits it. Many businesses likely use enterprise-wide tools like enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to help manage operations and planning, in addition to dedicated supply chain software solutions such as warehouse management systems (WMS) and transportation management systems (TMS). These tools are significant data hubs and integrate with components and sources from all over the organization.
Additionally, you need to know what happens to that data. Is it being sent externally, crossing organizational lines? Is it being analyzed or restructured, or does it get sent in its raw format? Who has access to the data? For bad actors, data is the treasure trove to be exploited or captured. The better leaders understand their data, the easier it is to safeguard it.
Next, build your disruption playbook. Think about all the ways your business continuity might get disrupted. Maybe it’s a cybersecurity incident; maybe it’s a power failure; maybe one of your business partners experiences a system outage. How would you go about communicating this disruption to your suppliers, employees and customers? What will happen to your organization’s data during this disruption? Would it be corrupted or lost? Could it be recovered? Is there a backup in place? Play this out on a granular level, thinking about all the communication and collaboration that needs to take place.
Finally, it’s time to test the playbook. Bring all the key leaders into a room and give them a hypothetical scenario. Take the time to play out the scenario from start to finish, imagining each step you’d have to take. Ideally, you’d play out all categories of disruption, from natural disasters to another pandemic, taking notes and adjusting the playbook as necessary. There’s no rush to finish the exercise in a day or two. It’s worth spending the time to do it thoroughly and get it right.
What comes next?
Of course, performing the above exercises won’t magically create a mature cybersecurity program to support an organization’s supply chain, but it will position teams well to take the next steps. From here, it’s about making sure you have the right talent and technology in place to continuously and proactively support your organization and your partners. This includes increasing visibility, collaboration and education across the end-to-end network.
And, it must be said, the work doesn’t stop once this team is in place. It’s a dynamic process that evolves with business needs and external variables. Every organization’s supply chain has a role to play in security. The sooner you move from inconsistent security practices to a formal, cross-functional operating model, the safer and more agile your network will be.
