Why Are Supply Chain Attacks Popular Today

If you want to know what makes supply chain attacks popular today, you need to look at the changing nature of business risk. Until relatively recently, cybersecurity to protect your company against the theft of sensitive data or systems infiltration meant protecting your data and IT network.

In other words, to minimize your risk of data breaches all you needed were systems in place to protect your business from threats like malicious code and other cyber attacks.

The Changes in the Way We Do Business

More recently, the adoption of newer systems and technologies has affected how we do business. It has increased the sheer amount of data that businesses must protect. Online ordering, mobile applications and cloud computing make data accessible from anywhere, at any time. And it’s almost a necessary part of doing business today to gather more detailed data on customers, suppliers and partners. That information is mined to find ways to improve productivity and sales.

The combination of the exponential increase in the amount of data, the number of ways we can gain access to that data and the importance of that data for business operations, has had an unfortunate side effect. Cyber criminals realize that successful attacks have the potential for bigger payoffs and they have the opportunity to attack in many different ways.  

Why Supply Chain Attacks are So Popular

In a recent corporate study, 80% of respondents felt that software supply chain attacks were the fastest-growing cyber threat to businesses today. A supply chain attack involves hacking weak links in a company’s supply network to give attackers access to sensitive information from the target company.

A well-known example of a supply chain attack is the 2013 breach of Target’s login, passwords and other network access data through a third-party in its supply chain.

The popularity of supply chain attacks means your supply chain management system must not only ensure the security of your own systems but those of every partner in your supply network.

If you found this post interesting, check out our recent article on how autonomous vehicles will boost ecommerce.