How To Build SCRM Plan For Cyber Supply Chain Risk Management
Supply chain risk management has become one of the most critical business considerations. A robust SCRM plan can save you from potential risks, mainly internal and external cyber risks. Cyber risks can lead to financial risks, a bad reputation for your business or company, cyber security threats, and many more.
Today, about 70% of businesses are keen on ensuring the visibility of the supply chain through technological investment. Many tools can help monitor suppliers effectively, considering the diversity of the technology.
What plan should you use to avoid most of the risks associated with the supply chain for cyber supply?
This article will show how you, as a business or company owner, can build a robust SCRM plan.
Let’s dive in.
1. Establish The Goals And Purpose Of Your SCRM Plan
The first thing to do is to define the objectives and scope of your SCRM plan. Determine how you can avoid any of the possible risks. To prevent cyber security risks, ensure you comply with the regulations and always protect your property and data.
Moreover, having a goal is critical to ensuring you have a strong foundation for the business. Therefore, you can quickly develop mitigating factors against risks and ensure business continuity.
2. Conduct A Cyber Risk Assessment
Proper cyber risk assessment is very important for identifying the possible risks in your supply chain. How do you conduct the evaluation? Evaluate the potential risks that will affect the supply chain, evaluate the chances of a cyber-attack occurring on each level, and Identify the weak spots by evaluating each level. This will help you identify the supplier who can lead to any potential risk.
3. Evaluate The Suppliers And Their Positions
Identifying the supply chain involved in your organization is so crucial. What you need to know includes The contractors and suppliers involved, the importance of the suppliers in your organization, and the data and systems they can handle
After identifying them, check whether they fit your security standards. You should consider working with reputable suppliers and contractors since they know how to manage risks.
4. Come Up With Mitigation Strategies
Identifying the risks will help identify strategies that can reduce the potential risks. Some of the strategies include;
Third-party Risk Insurance
Cyber incidents can lead to financial loss in your supply chain, and it is crucial to have options on how and which cyber insurance can cover the losses.
Assessment And Audit For Cybersecurity
Security assessments and audits should be conducted regularly. This will help ensure compliance with best practices and identify potential risks.
Response Plans
Having a well-structured response plan and good communication is essential. The incident response plan for your suppliers should align with yours.
5. Ensure Continuous Monitoring And Reporting
Continuous monitoring is essential since cyber risks can emerge at any time. Constant monitoring and reporting involves;
Reporting Regularly
Assess the cyber security risks and create effective reporting protocols for everyone involved. Work closely with your suppliers to be aware of any potential dangers.
Incident Review
Identify the leading cause of the problem and ensure that you won’t make the same mistake again.
Adapting To Changes
Reviewing and adjusting your plan over time is essential since technology, suppliers, and the market constantly change. This means that you should always be updated on what is going on in the market and constantly update the technological skills and tools you use.
Regular Audits
Regular audits will help update the plan by reviewing it, considering the emerging risks, and what to do about them.
Threat Intelligence Sharing
This is a good way to eliminate cybercriminals in your supply chain. It will help you identify emerging threats and communicate before they occur.
6. Ensure Business Continuity
This means you can recover from a disaster in the event of any cyber risk. Disaster recovery is essential to avoid more disruptions. You should always be ready to handle any upcoming risk to minimize disruption. This can be done by having backup suppliers in case the primary ones have an issue that can interfere with the supply chain, making sure that there are quick backup and restore processes and sound communication systems
7. Incorporating Training programs
Educating the employees and customers on the possible risks within the supply chain is essential. They should be aware of every potential risk and know how to solve them. Training and awareness can be about Phishing attacks, ransomware threats, and cyber security practices like managing passwords.
When the employees and your customers have this knowledge, there will be very low chances of cyber security risk.
Bottom Line
Creating robust cyber supply chain risk management is very important to ensure the supply chain’s effectiveness. Therefore, if you follow these steps, you will have an adequate supply chain.
Always ensure that you do a regular review of your supply chain risk management so that you can adjust to emerging threats. Supply chain attacks are continuous and ever-growing, so you should always be ready to handle any emerging risk by applying automated solutions.
