Supply Chain Security : Just secure your supply chain – Its not that easy
“Just secure your supply chain” is the top-selling IKEA flat-pack in cybersecurity right now.
Looks simple—until you’re ankle-deep in 168 unlabelled parts and one wrong twist snaps the whole thing. 🛍️, 🛒, 🪙 are why everyone’s talking about it… this post helps you build supply chain security right and gives you guidance on how to conduct third party security assessments.
Why Supply Chain Security Is So Hard (And Why Third-Party Security Feels Impossible)
Lets look at the 3 types of Supply Chains
| Types | What’s inside | Why it breaks your brain |
|---|---|---|
| Services | MSPs, payroll, outsourced dev teams | You signed the contract, not their security policy. Off-boarding? Usually a calendar reminder that nobody actioned. |
| Suppliers | Logistics, OT, hardware vendors | Often live in a parallel universe of legacy VPNs and air-gapped myths. You can’t install your EDR on their forklift PCs. (yet?) |
| Software | SaaS, open-source packages, CI/CD Actions | Every modern app drags hundreds of transitive dependencies; they patch on their timetable, not yours. |
Most orgs lean on annual self-assessment surveys to police all three layers. Those spreadsheets rarely get verified, clash across teams (Procurement vs. Security vs. Legal), and collapse entirely once you hit “fourth-party” depth vendors-of-your-vendors you’ve never heard of… Plus doing any form of third party security assessment is daunting and a near impossible task to complete.
Regulation is calling time on that shrug. For supply chain security and third parties the forthcoming UK Cyber Security & Resilience Bill will give ministers powers to set minimum cyber-hygiene standards and demand real-time assurance across “important” entities and their suppliers (GOV.UK). In finance, DORA is already live, forcing banks, fintechs and insurers to register every ICT third-party and prove they can keep running if one of them falls over (EIOPA).
What the headlines teach us
| Case | What happened | Supply-chain lesson |
|---|---|---|
| Marks & Spencer (2025) | Scattered Spider phished an IT-helpdesk contractor; customer data lost, online ops crippled for months (The Guardian) | Even a household brand is only as strong as the outsourcer with password-reset powers. |
| Coop Sweden (2021) | REvil ransomware hit Kaseya VSA; 500 supermarkets shut their tills (BleepingComputer) | A single MSP platform outage can brick thousands of POS systems in minutes. |
| Coinbase (2025) | Criminals bribed rogue overseas support agents; abused internal tools to lift customer PII (Coinbase) | Insider risk inside suppliers counts as supply chain security risk too. |
| MOVEit mass breach (2023–24) | Cl0p zero-day in file-transfer software cascaded to >900 orgs, inc. BA & US-DOE (WIRED) | One vulnerable component can ricochet through an entire global ecosystem. |
Ten common pitfalls (choose your pain)
- One-and-done questionnaires – no follow-up, no proof.
- Treating ISO 27001/CE+ as a silver bullet – certificates expire, scopes vary, controls aren’t equal. But to be clear 27001 and CE+ are a great thing to have!
- Shadow SaaS blindness – Marketing buys a new AI tool: instant new processor of customer data.
- VPNs with perpetual access – the supplier finished the project last year… their creds still work.
- No tiering – coffee bean supplier gets the same scrutiny as your payroll.
- Ignoring insiders – rogue 3rd party support agents, un-vetted (overseas) (underpaid) contractors, or credential-stuffed interns.
- All-or-nothing contracts – no right-to-audit, no breach-notification SLA.
- Procurement/Security silo – PO signed before security review begins.
- Static asset lists – devs add new micro-services weekly; your register is last quarter’s fantasy.
- Relegating it to ‘IT’s problem’ – legal, finance, ops and risk all need skin in the game.
Ten quick wins for overloaded team’s
| Effort | Action | Why it works fast |
|---|---|---|
| Low | Turn on MFA for EVERY! external user/service account | Stops over 99 % of basic credential attacks |
| Low | Pull a fresh list of supplier logins & tokens | Finds zombie access in an afternoon. |
| Low | Classify suppliers Gold/Silver/Bronze (based on data & privilege) | Lets you focus scarce hours where a breach would really hurt. |
| Medium | Add breach notification & audit clauses to new contracts | Zero cost, future-proofs relationships. |
| Medium | Use free SBOM scanners (CycloneDX, Syft) on your repos | Flags known-bad packages. |
| Medium | Auto-disable dormant VPN creds after 30 days | One IAM rule = huge risk cut. |
| Medium | Subscribe to NCSC Early-Warning & CISA KEV feeds | Free intel, surfaces supplier IP misbehaviour. |
| High | Run a supplier tabletop once per quarter (“what if X goes down on payday?”) | Exposes hidden single points of failure. |
| High | Stand up a lightweight vendor-scorecard tool (SecurityScorecard free tier, UpGuard). | Continuous eye on the riskiest 25 suppliers. |
| High | Rotate third-party keys automatically (GitHub, AWS IAM) | Cuts window for stolen creds, scales well. |
When you’re ready to go deeper
For teams ready to move beyond quick wins and tackle end-to-end third-party security, these are the next-level supply chain strategies to consider.
- Continuous TPRM platform integrated with your SIEM for alerting.
- Zero-Trust broker (BeyondCorp, Zscaler) to replace full-network VPNs.
- SaaS discovery / CASB to corral shadow apps.
- Fourth-party mapping—require key vendors to share their supplier lists.
- Incident-response clauses aligned with the UK Cyber Resilience Bill’s reporting windows and DORA’s Register-of-Information deadlines.
TL;DR
Supply chain security is a nightmare flat-pack, but you don’t need to build the entire wardrobe tonight. Tighten the highest-impact screws first, show your board how the UK Cyber Resilience Bill and DORA are raising the stakes, then layer on the fancy drawers and doors.
