Supply Chain Intelligence

What is Supply Chain Intelligence?

Supply chain intelligence is a subset of threat intelligence that focuses on identifying, analyzing, and mitigating risks and vulnerabilities within the supply chain.

As with all types of threat intelligence, the goal is to improve an organization’s ability to make informed decisions by leveraging data.

What is a Supply Chain Attack?

A supply chain attack is an attack that targets the less-secure elements in a supply network.

A common example is an attacker compromising a target’s supplier or third-party service provider to gain access to the target’s systems or data.

By infiltrating the supply chain, attackers can exploit trust relationships and bypass traditional security defenses.

Supply chain attacks have to potential to cause widespread disruption, large data breaches, and obviously unauthorized access to sensitive information.

Why is Supply Chain Threat Intelligence Important?

Supply chain threat intelligence should be part of your organization’s risk management program. Here are a few of the reasons why:

Prevent Disruptions: By identifying potential threats before they’re exploited. it helps prevent disruptions across your entire supply chain network.
Protect Sensitive Data: It helps prevent data breaches by alerting you to threats targeting your organization’s supply chain.
Maintain Reputation: It helps maintain a company’s reputation by preventing security incidents that could negatively impact customer trust.

Types of Supply Chain Threat Intelligence

When integrating supply chain threat intelligence, there are three types of intel that every organization should monitor:

Dark Web Intelligence: Recapture your vendors’ stolen credentials, session tokens, and corporate data that could be used to gain access to your network,
Malware intelligence: Monitor the latest malware threats, including the latest victims (especially your vendors) and TTPs, to identify potential risks to your network.
Brand Intelligence: Monitor brand mentions, lookalike domains, and impersonation attacks targeting organizations in your supply chain.

How to monitor supply chain risk?

Map Your Supply Chain: Create a list of all your suppliers, including software providers, hardware vendors, and service partners. Document which suppliers have access to sensitive systems or data.
Conduct Risk Assessments: Evaluate the suppliers security levels using a questionnaire or audit. Analyze how a supplier’s vulnerabilities could impact your organization.
Monitor for Threats: Continuously monitor the dark web for leaked data, stolen credentials, or general chatter associated with your supply chain. Ensure this information can’t be used to negatively impact your organization. Contractual Obligations: Include requirements for continuous risk monitoring and breach notification in vendor contracts. Ensure that all suppliers comply with industry standards and regulations relevant to your industry (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA, CMMC).
Prepare for an incident: Create an incident response plan specifically for handling supply chain-related security incidents. Before an incident happens, practice your team’s ability to respond.

Examples of Supply Chain Attacks

SolarWinds Attack (2020): Hackers compromised the SolarWinds Orion platform by injecting malicious code into its updates. The malicious code was then distributed to thousands of customers. This allowed the attackers to breach numerous government and private organizations undetected for several months. The attackers gained access to highly sensitive information and systems.
Target Data Breach (2013): Attackers gained access to Target's network by compromising the credentials of a third-party HVAC vendor. Once inside, they installed malware on Target’s point-of-sale systems, leading to the theft of credit card and personal information of over 40 million customers. The breach caused significant financial loss and reputational damage to Target.
NotPetya Attack (2017): The NotPetya malware was distributed through a compromised update of the Ukrainian accounting software MEDoc. The malware quickly spread globally, causing significant disruptions to numerous businesses, including major companies like Maersk and Merck. It resulted in billions of dollars in damages due to it shutting down operations and loss of data.

How to Prevent Supply Chain Attacks

While there’s no silver bullet, there are a number of strategies to help prevent attacks or at least mitigate their impact. These include:

Implement strict access controls: Limit access to sensitive systems and data for both internal and external users, using the principle of least privilege.
Use multi-factor authentication (MFA): Enforce MFA for all users, especially those accessing critical systems and data.
Implement dark web monitoring: Regularly monitor the dark web for any signs of compromised credentials, session tokens, or sensitive company data across both your organization as well as your supply chain partners. Automatically reset stolen credentials or terminate session cookies as needed.
Implement network segmentation: Segment your network to limit the potential impact of a supply chain attack and contain any breaches that occur.
Encrypt data in transit and at rest: Ensure that all data exchanged with suppliers and third parties is encrypted to prevent unauthorized access.
Monitor and audit third-party activity: Continuously monitor and audit the activities of suppliers and third-party vendors to gain real-time insights into any unusual or unauthorized actions within your network.
Establish incident response plans: Develop and maintain incident response plans that include procedures for addressing supply chain attacks.
Regularly update and patch systems: Ensure that all systems, including those used by suppliers, are regularly updated and patched to protect against known vulnerabilities.
Implement a zero-trust architecture: Adopt a zero-trust approach to security. Assume that no user or system, whether inside or outside the network, is trustworthy by default.
Conduct supplier assessments: Regularly evaluate the security posture of all suppliers and third-party vendors to ensure they meet your organization’s security standards.
Require contractual security commitments: Include security requirements and obligations in contracts with suppliers and third-party vendors to ensure they adhere to your security policies.
Conduct regular security training: Provide ongoing security awareness training for employees to ensure they understand the risks and know how to respond to potential threats.
Perform penetration testing: Regularly conduct penetration testing to identify and remediate vulnerabilities. A pen test report should offer insights into how an attacker could exploit your network.
Use secure coding practices: Ensure that software development follows secure coding practices to prevent vulnerabilities that could be exploited in a supply chain attack.