Supply Chain Management: Best Practices for Improved Cybersecurity

“There are only two types of companies: those that have been hacked and those that will be” says Robert Mueller, former FBI Director. This terrifying quote is enough for the goosebumps if you own a company. Cyber-attacks are no less than a nuclear attack in the digital world. Moreover, you are not always even aware that someone has attacked you. Eventually, you realize what you lost, when you have already lost everything. You can now imagine what blunder it can bring if you don’t go for cybersecurity.

On the other hand, if you are someone who takes the responsibility for cybersecurity, you need to take care of each and every activity precisely. One of the most dangerous risks includes Supply chain. However, you can deal with it if you are aware of the Supply chain risk management. If not, you can go for risk management certification. There are certain things to keep in mind while supply chain risk management. At first, you need to categorize your working area. Furthermore, you need to develop a strategy for the approach. The categorized consideration must include:

• Software
• Hardware
• Technology providers
• Third-party business associates
• Vendors
• Contractor

In order to make an approach, you must follow some best practices that apply to all of your vendors. Even if you a have risk management certification already, you must consider these practices:

Make an effective team

You might need a hand to deal with cybersecurity while Supply chain risk management. Hence, you should look for some people who have expertise in this field and make an internal team. They can be anybody, even from the group of people who has a hand in the project such as members of vendor risk management, mergers and acquisitions, security firms, legal, and more.

Don’t leave a door

Once you develop software, make sure you scan it for the vulnerabilities. No one is such perfect to develop software without any loophole. If you don’t scan the product prior to the development, it might leave a door wide open for hackers to take advantage. You must address the vulnerabilities before deploying it on the network.

Monitor your vendor and technology providers continuously

You can follow every best practice in a risk management certification. However, you need to be able to ensure that third parties are following the security obligations. Moreover, your software providers also must update their system regularly. Monitoring the software solutions continuously is the best way to ensure that your vendor’s systems are working at their best without any breach in the security. Additionally, the potential risks and the loopholes are reduced on their networks.

Discover critical suppliers

Your team should be enough capable of establishing the security expectation of your organization for the third-party software provider. That is why you need to understand the risks and accordingly, convey the expectation and requirements to the software vendors. A very old phrase “Precaution is better than cure” suits perfectly in such situation.

Keep an eye on your vendor’s access

You might be working for an organization where a large number of vendors are associated. This creates more entry points in their network. However, if you are aware of the third parties that have access to the network or sensitive data, you can easily decide where you have to focus more. You need to monitor these vendors closely as they create a critical loophole in the security system. This is why; most of the training organizations focus more on this in the risk management certification. If you really want to master this, you must go for this certification course for professionals.

No one is above cybersecurity

Your organization might be suffering from legal issues and they hire a law firm for that. Hence, they will be taking care of the sensitive matters. However, the risk of a breach of security needs more than this. You need to also focus on cybersecurity. Whatever seems to be opening a door for an attacker must be examined, with a good strategy to combat vulnerabilities. A risk management certification is all about securing the organization from all these risks.

There should be a contract for how data must be handled and secured

It is dangerous to take a risk in getting rid of the risks. You should create legal documents which explain your expectation of how to handle the data to your vendors. Moreover, you should suggest them what to do if a breach that affects your sensitive or non-sensitive information does occur.

It is more important for you to monitor your vendors and other third-party technology providers before time than to create a strategy after a breach in security. The best way to achieve so is to go for a risk management certification and improve cybersecurity because precaution is always better than cure.

• Tags:
• cybersecurity

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