Today supply chain security and risk management is the buzzword everyone is talking about. The supply chain is the backbone of any industry and with the increase in complexity, out-sourcing, and off-shoring, disruptions in the supply chain have increased. Supply chain security is a massively broad area that includes everything from physical threats to cyber threats, from protecting transactions to protecting systems, and from mitigating risk with parties in the immediate business network to mitigating risk derived from third, fourth and "n" party relationships. However, there is growing agreement that supply chain security requires a multifaceted and functionally coordinated approach.
In the past few years, with the tremendous growth in the threat landscape and the use of numerous types of actor vectors to carry out sophisticated attacks like ransomware, supply chain, DDSO etc., it is important to consider security at every step of the software supply chain. An attack like the one that has compromised a single company’s software product and had a ripple effect across more than 1,000 organizations emphasizes how big the problem can get and why it is important to apply security to the whole supply chain, not just to the production environment.
A software supply chain attack occurs when malicious code is purposefully added to a component, using the supply chain of that component to distribute the code to its targets. To fight against such attacks, the Security approach needs to span the whole supply chain, integrating different needs from different pieces. Vulnerability on any of the components can have a significant impact on the end process or the critical operation. Hence, each component in the supply chain needs to be analyzed and addressed as a possible attack vector.
Software supply chain security is the act of securing the components, activities, and practices involved in the creation and deployment of software. It requires the focus on security throughout the entire software development life cycle (SDLC) from designing to implementation. some of the key security considerations include Assessing the security and trustworthiness of the code including third-party or proprietary code, securely build, and deploy code, ensure the security of the protocol interface used, user organizations should Continuously test and monitor deployed applications for threats and many more such practices.
While this short piece has been written to sensitize the reader on supply chain risk management and why securing the software supply chain is important for all from vendors to user organizations. At the upcoming DSCI Best Practice meet 2022, we intend to cover this area in greater detail by calling upon the practitioners and experts who will discuss on "Securing Software Supply Chain... Provenance, composition, and vulnerability remediation" in detail. Best practice meet 2022 also provides a platform for everyone to listen to the panelists and ask questions and contribute to the discussion.
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