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If you manage a pallet manufacturing company, you already know that your business relies on a large supplier network. Your company likely deals with lumber mills, logistics firms, equipment vendors, software companies, and more. And there's a good chance that many of your interactions with them are digital. That's because every one of them plays a key role in maintaining production flow, making manual processes inadequate. However, their tight integration into your company's operations can also pose risks. You're essentially banking on the cybersecurity measures each different vendor employs to keep your business's digital assets safe. Needless to say, that's a major source of risk to your business. Here's an overview of cybersecurity risks posed by suppliers in pallet manufacturing businesses and how to mitigate them.
The modern pallet manufacturing industry moves faster than ever before. To accommodate that pace, the suppliers you work with are likely adopting cloud platforms, automation, and other digital tools to keep up. As they do, the chances of security oversights grow. Unfortunately, vendor cybersecurity budgets rarely keep pace with the adoption of new platforms and tools.
Meanwhile, cybercriminals are increasingly turning to supply chain attacks, knowing that smaller vendors often have lax security measures. By exploiting those, they can leverage infrastructure connections and trust relationships to gain access to systems across whole supply chains. So, you now face a situation where a breach targeting a partner can turn into a massive security headache for your business.
To defend your business, it's essential to create robust supply chain risk management procedures and policies. Since there's no way to avoid digital connections to important vendors, risk mitigation is the only option. You should start by gaining an understanding of the current common cybersecurity risks from suppliers in pallet manufacturing businesses.
When your systems connect to any part of a supplier's infrastructure, their cybersecurity deficiencies become yours. The common threats include:
When a supplier or vendor you work with suffers an attack, the attacker may not make their presence known right away. That's because it's more profitable to leverage privileged access to move laterally into connected systems. The way an attacker does so depends largely on the data or access they gather from the targeted supplier. The most common attack progressions are as follows.
The most direct way an attacker can leverage a successful breach of one of your partners is by stealing credentials. If your vendor has any access to your company's systems, stolen credentials create a direct path into your systems. Importantly, an attacker doesn't necessarily need to steal credentials belonging to your systems. If the vendor has a habit of reusing passwords, you can bet the attacker will try the credentials to access every connected organization they find.
An attacker may target one of your vendors' web portals, looking to sneak malware into its underlying systems. Then, when you access the vendor's portal, it can spread the malware into your business network. That can allow the attacker to open up a direct pathway into your company's systems. Or, it can enable a ransomware attack that can grind your business to a halt.
Often, equipment vendors use remote access tools to update and maintain the hardware you own. If an attacker compromises a remote access tool, they can gain access to your company's network. Such attacks can go on for extended periods, especially if the vendor doesn't audit remote session logs to detect intruders.
If you've purchased IIoT devices for use in your production process, they can represent a critical vulnerability. The key lies in how carefully your vendor configured them. IIoT devices have default credentials that, if left unchanged, can allow an attacker in. That can enable a hijack that the attacker can use as a jumping-off point to reach other parts of your infrastructure.
The best way to defend your business against the cybersecurity risks created by third-party vendors is to choose your partners carefully. To do that, you must learn to spot vendors that pose an elevated cybersecurity risk. Look for the following.
A trustworthy vendor should be happy to provide documentation spelling out their cybersecurity posture. They should be able to furnish a service organization controls (SOC) report, along with penetration test summaries of relevant systems. They should also have documented cybersecurity policies that describe their internal security processes.
A trustworthy vendor should follow a regular firmware and software update schedule. If you spot a vendor using outdated operating systems or neglecting firmware updates, you should be wary. There are situations in which a vendor might use legacy software when no modern alternative exists. However, those cases should be rare. And when they do happen, the vendor should have strict controls in place to wall off its potentially vulnerable software from external attack.
Any vendor that requests broad or vague access to your business network should be a red flag. Typically, vendors need specific and narrow access to relevant systems. If they're asking for more, it likely means they're either inexperienced or more concerned with their convenience than your business's cybersecurity.
Reputable vendors should take proper measures to protect customer data. That should include encryption standards, clear data retention policies, and up-to-date incident response plans. If you encounter a vendor that can't give you a clear picture of their data protection measures, it likely indicates deficiencies.
A data breach can happen to virtually any company, no matter how much effort they put into defending themselves. However, a trustworthy organization learns from its mistakes. If you encounter a vendor with a history of data breaches or downtime, avoid them at all costs.
Now that you know what to look for, you can build a checklist to evaluate a supplier's cybersecurity before signing any contract. The following is a model process to follow.
The first step is a thorough review of a possible supplier's cybersecurity documentation. Proceed in the following order.
Assuming a potential supplier passes your initial checks, the next step is to evaluate their access requirements. This will let you know your business's potential cybersecurity exposure should you work with the supplier. Ensure all of the following.
Even limited access can pose a security risk if a supplier's systems have significant vulnerabilities. To guard against that, look into your potential supplier's software update policies as follows.
Looking into software and firmware update policies is especially important when you're evaluating costs of pallet automation, since automation equipment often includes embedded software and remote-access components that must be secured.
Finally, you should check your potential supplier's operational history for any red flags. As you do, determine the following.
Despite careful vetting, your company's suppliers will always represent some level of cybersecurity risk. Therefore, it makes sense to harden your business's systems and processes to minimize that risk. There are a few key steps that can help you minimize the most common cybersecurity risks from suppliers in pallet manufacturing businesses.
First, segment your business network to help minimize attack surfaces. At a minimum, you want all information technology (IT) assets in one network segment and all operational technology (OT) assets in another. A strict separation between the two is necessary. You should also restrict communications between production systems and administrative systems to the greatest extent possible.
Next, you should enforce strict vendor access controls. Begin by assigning separate remote access login credentials to each technician. Never allow a supplier to share credentials among multiple employees. Next, create a process to revoke access credentials after a supplier's work is completed. And create a process to monitor remote access sessions in real time, engaging a third-party cybersecurity firm if necessary.
It's also wise to limit which employees can approve vendor access requests. And those employees in particular, as well as your workforce more broadly, should receive basic cybersecurity training. It can help them identify suspicious vendor requests and access patterns. That may help halt a breach in progress if one occurs.
Managing the cybersecurity risks created by your pallet manufacturing business's suppliers and vendors is no longer optional. As supply chain attacks increase in frequency and ferocity, it's key to keeping your business's systems and operations safe. With the top-to-bottom approach described above, you can mitigate any vulnerabilities introduced by your partner organizations. That should help your business guard itself against all but the most determined supply chain attackers.
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