SCMG501 Week 6 Discussion

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School

American Public University *

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Course

501

Subject

Information Systems

Date

Jan 9, 2024

Type

docx

Pages

3

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Good afternoon fellow classmates and professor, Supply chain networks have evolved to be heavily dependent on technology and its capabilities to drive business operations. Many attackers have shifted focus from targeting the large-scale enterprises and organizations to their individual departments that are smaller businesses consisting of their supply chains. These are more favorable entry points for attackers because of the size of the business or department that may posses weaker cybersecurity measures. Therefore, potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities in supply chain management can come from the suppliers, manufacturers, and from individuals who partner or work for the supply chains. Vulnerabilities from these different areas in the supply chain could present different types of risks that can affect businesses and their operations. Lower-tier suppliers may use poor information security practices with vulnerable software that can be easily penetrated by outside attackers. This can be mitigated by businesses ensuring their low-tiered suppliers are actively staying up to date with their networks, emerging systems, and application-level vulnerabilities (Farrukh, 2017). Suppliers could also have compromised software or counterfeit hardware that may have embedded malware, which can affect the whole supply chain operation and shut down their networks causing disruptions for businesses and their processes. Mitigation measures for this type of risk can include supply chains obtaining the source code for all the software that is purchased from suppliers. They can also implement secure booting processes to look for authentication codes where system will not boot if there aren’t any recognizable codes.
Cybersecurity risks from manufacturers could include data breaches where different quantities, materials, products, are ordered and by different vendors or suppliers to infiltrate supply chain operations. Manufacturers can create more detailed process and procedures that would include having tightly controlled purchases of goods and materials, pre-qualified list of approved vendors, incorporating more robust quality assurance practices like unpacking and inspecting materials from suppliers (CSRS, 2017). These procedures would ensure the prevention of data breaches. Human errors that are intentional are not can be detrimental that can cause cybersecurity risks in all the areas of the supply chain. For example, individuals that take part of bring-your- own device (BYOD) policies can bring in phishing and malware threats to supply chains. Ensuring a secure connection by having businesses use virtual private networks (VPNs) is a great solution to reduce these types of risks (Rao, 2021). In manufacturing a worker can infect the network with malware that can cause production issues. One solution can be implementing automation to conduct system tests and scanning of the network for any threats that would eliminate any threat from human interaction with the systems. Cyber security risks and vulnerabilities are intentional malicious efforts to breach systems to steal information, sabotage, make financial gains, cause disruptions, and to control systems and operations. All these cyber risks can induce global implications that can affect the whole supply chain environment negatively. Networks systems can become congested with traffic from a denial-of-service attack (DoS) causing a crash. This crash can disrupt supply chain operations that would further cause delays in gathering materials form production of goods, increase lead times for shipping and delivery logistics, and destroy customer satisfaction. This would lead to fluctuations in supply and
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