Over the last few years, supply chain attacks have been prevalent in businesses with a digital presence. People’s trust in legitimate applications suffers from malware attacks that harm the software infrastructures and compromise their users’ data.

 

For instance, the SolarWinds, NotPetya, Target, and Home Depot security attacks have brought significant damage to their stakeholders, especially their customers and even companies in their particular industries worldwide.

 

What does it mean for business owners and CEOs? What would be the impact of security attacks on businesses? What can they do to avoid this type of damage? Keep on reading to find out.

 

What Is a Software Supply Chain Attack?

A software supply chain attack occurs when hackers gain control and manipulate the code in third-party software components to compromise the applications that use them. They attack the software to steal data, corrupt systems, and access confidential parts of a company’s network.

 

For example, when retail giant Target was attacked, hackers compromised a supplier of the company. Then they used the supplier’s system access to obtain the sensitive information of the retail giant, leading to millions of dollars in damages.

 

What Does a Software Supply Chain Attack Look Like?

Here’s how an attack occurs. Let’s take the Codecov security breach as an example.

 

According to security experts, it took about two months before the company found out about the attack, another two weeks before the first indicator was shared, and another fortnight for the other indicators to be brought to the public.

 

Then, security experts worked to hunt down and determine the parts of the software impacted by the attackers. They created campaigns through threat intelligence platforms so that they can monitor the developments of the case.

After that, the experts started threat hunting and worked with engineers for IPS/IDS blocking. They also studied signal telemetry as a way to determine who was behind the attacks. At this point, a threat reconnaissance platform handled the threats until other indicators were discovered.

 

Should Companies Be Concerned about Software Supply Chain Attacks?

 External threats are of the utmost priority because the risk comes from most security systems unable to pinpoint what to protect in the first place. Though threat intelligence platforms process, correlate, and normalise all of a business’s intelligence sources, it can be challenging to decide which one should be the top priority.

 

There’s only one sure thing—cybersecurity is a daunting problem to tackle, and security technology developers must catch up to prevent the damage and provide excellent data protection for corporations and individuals alike.

 

What Can You Do to Mitigate the Risks of Software Supply Chain Attacks?

 First, your DevOps teams must have higher security awareness.

• All teams must incorporate security actions, be aware of vulnerabilities, and patch security bugs right away.
• Project leaders must regularly audit their controls and components to boost security.
• Create an effective software asset inventory and make sure it’s updated regularly.
• Assign a Chief Information Security Officer and a security team to make sure everything will be covered.

 

Final Thoughts

 With most business activities being highly dependent on technology, there’s no way software supply chain attacks will stop anytime soon. However, companies can get ahead of the threats and protect their business by investing in security and using the right cyber intelligence platforms.

 

Are you interested in getting help for your company’s digital risk intelligence? FraudWatch is the perfect partner for you. We are a digital brand protection company with security experts that can help you against phishing, malware, brand abuse, and other online attacks. Contact us for all of your cybersecurity needs!