Which Link in the Supply Chain?

About this interactive

A supply chain is every vendor behind what you buy, and the vendors behind them. The Supply Chain Management lesson's laptop maker buys chips, Wi-Fi cards and batteries from other companies, who buy their own materials from others again. A bad batch of batteries from one shared supplier reached several laptop brands at once. Security+ groups supply chain risk by the kind of provider it comes through. Hardware provider: the physical parts and devices. A faulty or counterfeit component, a part quietly changed partway through an order, a shortage that leaves you without machines, a device tampered with before it reaches you. The lesson's business laptop lines cost more partly because the parts inside stay consistent. Software provider: the code. The lesson's third-party dependencies live here: code libraries, modules, packages and container images bundled into a product, and the updates that ship it. A flaw or backdoor in any of them comes in with the product. Service provider: an outside company doing work for you or holding your data or access: an IT provider, a payroll firm, a cloud host, a help desk. Its mistakes, outages and breaches become yours. A quick test for each card: did the problem arrive in a physical part, in code, or through a company's people and systems acting for you?

What you'll learn

Trace a supply chain risk to the kind of provider it came through: a hardware provider, a software provider or a service provider
Recognize that a risk can enter several links down the chain, through a supplier's supplier, a bundled code library or a container image

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+

2.3 Explain various types of vulnerabilities.

NIST 800-53

SR-2 Supply Chain Risk Management Plan

ISC2 CISSP

1.11 Apply Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) concepts

NIST CSF

GV.SC-01 A cybersecurity supply chain risk management program, strategy, objectives, policies, and processes are established and agreed to by organizational stakeholders.

Key terms

Supply Chain: The network of vendors, suppliers, and service providers whose hardware, software, or services an organization depends on, each representing a potential source of security vulnerability.
Third-Party Dependency: An external vendor, supplier, or component—such as hardware, software libraries, or container images—that an organization relies on to deliver its products or services.
Supply Chain Risk Management: Supply Chain Risk Management is the process of identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks arising from the use of third-party hardware, software, and services throughout the supply chain, addressing threats such as counterfeit components and malicious code insertion.

Topics

Supply Chain Vendor Management Interactive Categorize

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