New-Tech Europe Magazine | Q2 2021

Fighting Cyber Risk Across the Supply Chain

Dr. Oren Eytan, Co-founder and CEO of the Israeli cyber company odix

You are only as strong as your weakest link. cybersecurity is heavily dependent on the complex interchange of a vastly interconnected and geographically diverse ecosystem that is both deep in its industrial reach and highly nuanced based on any number of risk factors impacting each partner. Attempting to accurately navigate the supply chain ecosystem may often involve managing “vendors, system integrators, services suppliers and other third-parties, plus the entire services and technology stack that contributes to the design, manufacturing, distribution, deployment, and consumption of information and communications technologies and services.” Supply chain

By better understanding what is at risk, contextualizing industry best practices, and defining the core pillars to building a dynamic cybersecurity culture across the supply chain invested players can be empowered to make the change and mitigate cyber threats coming from all directions. Defining the terms Richard George, the former National Security Agency technical director of information assurance and current senior advisor for cybersecurity at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory astutely observed that “Cybersecurity really is a supply chain problem that encompasses the telecom carriers that are used by businesses, the hardware and software that supports organizational workflow,

and the cloud assets that so many organizations are leveraging today.” With so many seemingly disconnected parts of the supply chain, the process of defining what the most pressing problem is and how to provide tangible solutions can be daunting. Understanding risk indicators and best practices may just be the solution… According to the risk methods 2020 Risk Report, risk indicators refer to “various factors that contribute to a certain type of business risk, or events that could cause supply chain disruption. For example, financial stability of a supplier is a type of risk that faces many organizations, while the risk indicators include specific incidents like bankruptcy, force majeure or product release delays.”

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