How Cybercriminals Could Be Infiltrating Your Supply Chain

Uploaded on 2023-10-25 in TECHNOLOGY--Resilience, FREE TO VIEW

In today’s modern technology landscape, you would expect for large organisations and enterprises to have advanced cyber defences in place - but can the same be said for their partners?

Cybercriminals have mastered the art of uncovering the paths of least resistance that lead to an organisation’s valuable assets and confidential information. To counter this, security professionals have introduced more robust and sophisticated measures to make it harder for attackers to succeed.

Yet, organisations are only as strong as their weakest link, and if a large organisation has invested in its cybersecurity infrastructure without its partners doing the same, then they have opened the door to “island hopping”.

Cybercriminals are increasingly opting for island hopping, where they infiltrate a single, weaker target to exploit existing credentials and gain access into larger enterprises – essentially, a paradise of interconnected organisations.

Island hopping represents a significant threat to any organisation that works with third parties. Particularly susceptible are those enterprises that engage with all sizes of vendors, contractors, and service providers.

Unfortunately, smaller suppliers with potentially weaker security postures can become easy entry points for cybercriminals and pose a substantial risk to their larger clients.

A Paradise For Cybercriminals

Even when suppliers appreciate the importance of cybersecurity, they may lack appropriate resources and be unable to afford the level of defence and monitoring capabilities that are necessary. Although, business partners and suppliers are not consciously letting bad actors into their networks unchallenged, adversaries are taking advantage of these trusted relationships.

Cybercriminals know that organisations often grant their business partners some level of access to their systems, making them prime targets for phishing, social engineering, and man-in-the middle attacks. Malicious actors are also aware that suppliers are often given more access to systems than they need. Therefore, the question for many enterprises has become, how do they secure their business from island hopping attacks, whilst at the same time being able to continue working with valued suppliers, whatever their size? This problem needs a solution capable of closing vulnerable security gaps in the collaborative workflow, whilst also keeping partnerships running smoothly.

The Role Of Zero Trust

A zero trust authentication strategy can play a pivotal role in an organisation’s cybersecurity infrastructure and ensure that suppliers don’t unwittingly become the bridge for island hopping attacks. Instead of assuming that users and devices are trustworthy, this approach requires continuous verification of every user, device, and application which tries to access resources, based on fine-grained authorisation that can accommodate nuanced data sharing across internal and external users.

By extending this centralised approach to suppliers and third parties, organisations can have visibility and access control of their entire ecosystem in one place, including users, suppliers, partners, roles, and applications. Always-on verification from dynamic risk indicators such as network device, identity, location, ensures that after authentication is granted it is also monitored throughout each digital interaction to detect any unauthorised access or hijacked session. In this way, any suspicious access can be denied or terminated.

Utilising zero trust authentication can be the difference between being a victim of cybercrime or thriving while protected.

Having the right kind of authentication tools in place will help to minimise risks and, if backed up with education and supporting materials, can further enhance security for all parties. Offering free cybersecurity training to suppliers can help them to improve their ability to defend and respond to threats as well as understand obligations to compliance regulations. This mutual commitment of time and resources can cement and build longer term commercial partnerships.

It’s important to understand that the risk of a breach is never completely eradicated when dealing with third parties. However, zero trust authentication significantly strengthens security and ensures that every access attempt is rigorously verified, reducing the odds of a successful attack.

Adopting a zero trust mindset puts organisations in a much safer position than those who trust anyone who seemingly has legitimate credentials but turns out to be an island hopping cyber tourist with criminal intentions.

Stuart Hodkinson is VP EMEA at PlainID

Image: Erik_and_so_on

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