Supply Chain – How To Manage What You Can’t Control
Lack of control over security measures in the supply chain is one of the most pressing issues in cybersecurity today. When organisations rely on external vendors, partners, or service providers, they inherit risks that can be difficult to monitor or mitigate directly.
Here are the biggest challenges around supply chain security when you don’t control third-party security measures:
1. Limited Visibility into Third-Party Practices
You often don’t have insight into how vendors manage security — including their patching schedules, access controls, employee training, or incident response procedures. This lack of transparency makes it hard to assess actual risk or respond quickly to threats.
Supply Chain questionnaires are often manual and this creates complexity – and makes them hard to manage!
2. Varying Security Standards
Vendors operate with different levels of maturity and compliance. Some may follow robust frameworks (e.g., ISO 27001, NIST), while others may do the bare minimum. If your partners are less secure than your own organisation, they can become the weak link.
3. Software and Hardware Vulnerabilities
Many organisations rely on third-party software libraries, firmware, or components in hardware devices. A compromise in just one supplier can ripple across the entire ecosystem (e.g., SolarWinds, Log4j). These vulnerabilities may remain hidden for long periods.
4. Inadequate Contractual Obligations
If your contracts with suppliers don’t explicitly require cybersecurity standards, incident reporting, or regular audits, you may have no legal leverage to enforce better practices or demand remediation.
5. Slow or Incomplete Incident Disclosure
Vendors may delay reporting breaches or underplay their impact, limiting your ability to respond in time. Without SLAs or clear breach notification requirements, you could be left exposed.
6. Fourth-Party Risks
Your vendors have vendors. If they don’t manage their third parties well, the risk multiplies. This "supply chain within the supply chain" can be incredibly difficult to monitor.
7. Lack of Centralised Risk Management
Many organisations lack a centralised process to assess and monitor vendor risk on an ongoing basis. Without proper tooling (e.g., continuous third-party risk assessments), you might only catch problems during onboarding — if at all.
8. Inconsistent Access Controls
Vendors often require access to systems, data, or cloud environments. If those access privileges aren’t well managed — or are broader than necessary — attackers could exploit them.
How to Reduce These Risks (Even Without Direct Control)
While you can't control external partners entirely, you can reduce exposure:
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Implement strong third-party risk management programs
Include security questionnaires, certifications, and ongoing assessments – ideally via a centralised platform. -
Require cybersecurity standards in contracts
Define expectations for security practices, incident response, and compliance where possible. -
Segment and monitor vendor access
Use the principle of least privilege, multi-factor authentication, and network segmentation. -
Use tools for continuous monitoring
Any touchpoint or access point for third parties to your network should be continuously monitored. -
Develop incident response playbooks that include
third-party scenarios
Plan for what happens if a supplier is compromised — who to contact, what to shut down, how to contain.
While the thought of trying to manage third party supply chain risk can be daunting – it needn’t be. A centralised platform for management can reduce the complexity and the manual overhead, making management of your supply chain easier than ever!