The Modern Threat Landscape: Why Supply Chain Security Matters

The efficiency and success of organizations are at stake as new cyber threats have emerged due to the increased reliance on third-party vendors and external service providers. These threats, often in the form of supply chain attacks, can have devastating consequences. These attacks can lead to significant data breaches and other security issues by exploiting the trust relationships between businesses and their suppliers. In this blog, we will delve into the concept of supply chain attacks, discuss notable examples, and provide strategies to mitigate these risks, emphasizing the situation’s urgency.

What are Supply Chain Attacks?

A supply chain attack is a complex and sophisticated form of cybercrime. It occurs when a cybercriminal infiltrates an organization’s network by compromising a less secure element within its supply chain. This could involve tampering with software updates, manipulating hardware, exploiting third-party service providers, or injecting malicious code into open-source libraries. The attackers leverage organizations’ trust in their suppliers, making these attacks particularly challenging to detect and defend against. IT professionals and cybersecurity experts must comprehensively understand these attacks to protect their organizations effectively.

Why Target the Supply Chain?

  1. Access to High-Value Targets

By infiltrating a single supplier, hackers can access multiple high-value targets. This is particularly concerning for large organizations, including government agencies, that rely on a wide network of suppliers and vendors. Once a supplier is compromised, the hackers can exploit the trusted relationship to breach more secure systems and networks of the end clients.

  1. Exploiting Trust Relationships

Supply chain attacks exploit the inherent trust between organizations and their suppliers. Companies often trust that their partners have robust security measures, which can lead to a false sense of security. While essential for business relationships, this trust can also be a vulnerability that attackers can exploit to insert malicious code or hardware without immediate detection, underscoring the need for a more comprehensive security approach.

  1. Lower Security Posture of Suppliers

Smaller suppliers and third-party vendors may not have the same security resources and defenses as their larger clients. Attackers target these less secure entities, knowing they are easier to compromise. Once inside, they can use the supplier’s legitimate access to move laterally into the more fortified environments of their primary targets.

 

Real-World Examples of Supply Chain Attacks

  1. Naivas Limited Ransomware Attack (2023)

The attack, orchestrated by an online cybercriminal organization called Threat Actor, was the largest customer data theft in Kenya’s retail sector. It breached the retail giant’s servers and systems, exposing private information, including invoices, agreements, and customer data, to possible manipulation. Naivas Limited revealed that the attack compromised some of its critical data.

Naivas additionally faced a 5 million Kenya Shilling penalty for failing to report the theft of customer data within 72 hours, as required by the Office of the Data Protection Commission (ODPC).

 

  1. Kenya Government eCitizen Cyber Attack (2023)

The Kenyan Government confirmed a cyber-attack on the eCitizen portal; the attack altered several government services, rendering them inaccessible to citizens. Such services included:

  • Passport applications and renewal
  • Visas for foreigners visiting the country
  • Driving licenses, identification cards, and national health records

The government’s vision to build digital ecosystems could easily be hampered by a re-occurrence of such an attack given that more than 100 government services have so far been onboarded into eCitizen. The risk is even higher, given the directive for all government payments through the eCitizen platform.

  1. Target Data Breach (2013)

Target is one of America’s largest chain stores. Attackers gained access to Target’s network through a third-party HVAC contractor. This breach led to the theft of payment card data for millions of customers, highlighting the vulnerabilities in relying on external service providers for critical operations.

The Devastating Impact of Supply Chain Attacks

Supply chain attacks have far-reaching and often severe implications:

  1. Widespread Impact: Because these attacks exploit trusted relationships, they can affect numerous organizations simultaneously, leading to extensive damage. This is even more rampant where an organization lacks a 3rd party risk assessment framework and has established trust relationships with multiple vendors.
  2. Detection Challenges: Supply chain attacks are difficult to detect since they originate from trusted sources. Traditional security measures may not be sufficient to identify these threats.
  3. Economic and Reputational Damage: Beyond direct financial losses, supply chain attacks can severely damage the reputations of the targeted organizations and their vendors, leading to long-term business impacts.

Guarding Your Business: Strategies to Mitigate Supply Chain Attacks

Given the sophisticated nature of supply chain attacks, Reel Informatics supports organizations in the assessment and adoption of comprehensive strategies such as:

  1. Vendor Risk Management: Implementing thorough vetting processes for third-party vendors, including regular security assessments and audits. We support you to ensure your suppliers adhere to strict security standards and practices.
  2. Software Integrity Checks: We provide outsourced program change and quality control services. The adoption of these ensures effective code signing and verification of the integrity of software updates before deployment. This maintains the integrity of software updates introduced into your computing environments.
  3. Network Segmentation: Our comprehensive IT audit analyzes your IT network. The primary focus is segmentation and trust relationships within the network. Segmentation limits the impact of a potential breach and helps contain the spread of malware or unauthorized access.
  4. Continuous Monitoring: Implementing continuous monitoring and real-time threat detection systems to identify unusual activities and help proactively identify and mitigate a supply chain attack. Our cybersecurity assessments help show you the weakest points in your infrastructure and the investments required.
  5. Incident Response Plan: We support the development and regular updates to your incident response plan specifically for supply chain attacks. This plan includes communication protocols with suppliers and vendors to ensure a coordinated response whenever an attack is identified.
  6. Regulatory and compliance support: Our training offering ensures we bring you up to speed with all regulatory requirements. The key to note is the Kenya Data Protection Act’s requirements for protecting an organization’s data and the organization’s responsibility to report any compromises.