Protecting your supply chain from crime and other threats is of the upmost importance. Businesses today are faced with a long list of security threats ranging from terrorism to piracy to garden-variety theft. There are many government and regional supply chain security initiatives around the world, but that doesn’t mean that businesses shouldn’t take their own steps to protect themselves, their products, and their supply chain strategy. Here are SpendEdge’s top 5 ways to ensure a security throughout the supply chain management process:
- Analyze: Analyze your entire supply chain in depth to identify potential risk factors, security threats, and weak spots. This should involve assessing each individual supplier, as well as the procurement solutions, services, and software that you are using. This will allow you to choose proper security measures and weigh the benefits of doing business with suppliers in higher-risk or unsecured areas.
- Look within: It’s essential that security measures take both external and internal threats into account. Internal security needs to be enforced just as vigilantly as external, as employee theft can seriously damage your business’s bottom line. Preventing theft from within your company should be one of your top priorities.
- Implement: Choose security measures that properly address your business’s needs and minimize risk. In addition to physical security measures, cybersecurity measures have become essential. Cybersecurity measures should be implemented through the entire supply chain, and, ideally, all suppliers will use the same supply chain management software and technologies. Proper cybersecurity initiatives can be more challenging for smaller third parties who are partnering with larger suppliers, as they may lack the resources or funds to obtain the more sophisticated security set-ups of their partners. However, it’s important that—regardless of size—all companies have some sort of cybersecurity in place.
- Automate: Automating your supply chain can help to make cybersecurity and other security efforts more effective, and leaves less room for human error to create risk. Automation can better detect security threats and vulnerable areas at the earliest stages, and is more effective than manual or human monitoring.
- Communicate: Open communication between the supply chain staff and IT or security staff is extremely important. Both sides should be aware of ongoing issues, points of concern, potential weaknesses or areas where breaches are most likely, and past security threats and instances. Your staff should be able to collaborate effectively to protect your supply chain and ensure that your security measures are properly carried out.
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