For Critical Infrastructure Organizations
ESG’s research indicates that not only are critical infrastructure organizations inadequately prepared for the current threat landscape, but most are compounding this problem by not doing enough to mitigate the risks associated with cyber supply chain security. To address these shortcomings, critical infrastructure organizations should:
Assess cyber supply chain risk across the organization. Since the cyber supply chain includes a broad range of participants, including IT vendors, suppliers, business partners, and contractors, many critical infrastructure organizations delegate cyber supply chain security management to a variety of internal groups and individuals. While this makes sense at an operational level, it makes it impossible to get a comprehensive perspective of cyber supply chain security or accurately measure cyber supply chain risk. To alleviate this unacceptable situation, CISOs and risk officers should take the time to map out their entire cyber supply chain—every partner, IT equipment vendor, SaaS provider, supplier, etc. Clearly, this will take time and require ample resources, but an end-to-end and up-to-date map of the cyber supply chain is an essential foundation for situational awareness and proactive risk management.
Integrate cyber supply chain security into new IT initiatives. When asked why cyber supply chain security has become more difficult, 44% of cybersecurity professionals blamed new IT initiatives that have increased the cyber-attack surface. This isn’t surprising given massive adoption of technologies like cloud computing, IoT, and mobile applications over the past few years. Unfortunately, new IT initiatives often prioritize business objectives at the expense of strong cybersecurity. Given today’s threat landscape, this type of laissez-faire approach to cybersecurity must be expunged from the organization. To address and mitigate cyber supply chain risk, CEOs must lead by example with the goal of building a corporate culture that inculcates strong cybersecurity into all business processes, programs, and supporting IT initiatives.
Fully integrate security into IT procurement. ESG data demonstrates that processes and procedures governing IT vendor security audits lack consistency and usefulness. As mentioned, best practices for IT vendor security audits should include the following steps:
Audit all strategic IT vendors (including service providers, cloud service providers, and distributors).
Follow a standard process for all vendor audits.
Implement a corporate policy where IT vendor security audit metrics have a significant impact for all procurement decisions.
A stringent audit process should pay for itself by lowering cyber supply chain risk over time. It will also send a clear message to IT vendors: Adhere to strong cybersecurity policies and procedures or hawk your insecure products and services elsewhere.
Address all aspects of software assurance. As in other findings in this report, critical infrastructure organizations have made progress on software assurance since 2010, but these improvements are based on additional tactical actions rather than an end-to-end strategic approach. Software assurance must be anchored by a secure software development lifecycle and the right skill set for secure software development. Furthermore, software assurance best practices must be followed with no exceptions. This demands an enterprise program for internally developed software as well as stringent controls on third-party software development, maintenance, and testing. Leading companies will also impose testing and quality standards on all commercial software.
Formalize external IT security. When it comes to cyber supply chain security, risk associated with working with third-party partners must be managed and mitigated with the same care as internal activities like vulnerability scanning and patch management. In fact, strong cyber supply chain security has become an SEC mandate and will likely find its way to other industries beyond financial services. Once again, this demands a consistent, documented, and measurable approach for third parties that provide IT services to or consume them from an organization. Aside from legal contracts, governance frameworks, and certifications, CISOs should explore new types of cyber intelligence designed for monitoring third-party risk from vendors like BitSight and SecurityScorecard.
Push for more help from Washington. Like many other critical issues, cybersecurity has been relegated into partisan politics and pork barrel programs. Critical infrastructure organizations should work together, come up with legislative recommendations, lobby for action, and make sure to keep the public aware of any partisan behavior or stalling in Washington.