HOW TO AVOID SUPPLY CHAIN HACKING
Survey results
AmeriQuest Business Services surveyed 2,000 people directly involved in procurement and found :
20.4 percent of the companies had no procurement process in place ; 13 percent had no idea if their company did , or did not have , a procurement process in place ; Less than a quarter of the survey respondents indicated that procurement was viewed as a strategic business partner ; Another 25 percent noted that procurement is simply seen as a function of accounts receivables / account payables ; Approximately 25 percent said they order supplies on their own and then file expense reports ; Fifteen percent of the survey respondents didn ’ t know which department managed their company ’ s procurement , even though they were directly involved in the process .
explains : “ The hackers got through from a small third-party vendor , an HVAC service – that is how they gained access to Target ’ s network .” It is thought that the vast majority of data breaches originate from the supply chain as hackers look for the weakest link . When you consider that large companies could have thousands of different suppliers of products and services , it is easy to see that just one of these not following the correct supply chain security processes could open up the entire company to a hack .
A lot of the information going across the supply chain is digital – and increasingly stored in the cloud , which may mean it is more vulnerable to cyber attack than it has been previously . Peterson says : “ There is an opportunity at any given time that hackers can breach any
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