For the past decade or so businesses have focused on building a force field around their perimeter and ensuring it is impossible for anything to enter or leave without permission. This is great if businesses did everything internally, hardwired to a network and didn’t rely on cloud-based solutions. But that’s isn’t how we do business in 2021.
Business has changed, technology has advanced and with it so have threats. Welcome to a world of agile business working and the ‘new normal’. We have become accustomed to constantly adapting to these changes without even realising it. The evolution of computers and the internet combined with our corporate and personal dependency on email, cloud-based services, Google and social media means that we will continuously live with the risk of being ‘hacked’ for the foreseeable.
Every business now has a reliance on the use of third-party applications in order to operate successfully. We now find it acceptable, and more cost effective, to out-source services that previously we would have had in house, along with applications we use operationally to assist with the day-to-day running of a business. Think of the platforms used for payroll, marketing, HR, procurement to name but a few!
The success of our business is now dependant on an entire ecosystem – an interconnected ecosystem that can have a major knock-on effect if one gets ‘infected’. We need to shift our cyber security focus from internal to external and ensure that we hold our suppliers and third-parties to the same high security standards as we hold ourselves internally. But what can we do? Now’s time to start thinking like a hacker, and understanding what they can see when they look at our organisation. They look at every element of the business searching for the weakest link, which most likely won’t be but possibly originates outside of your perimeter in one of your many third-party vendors. Whilst we can control our own internal security measures, we cannot control those within our supply chain. Or can we?
By simply using the Darkbeam platform or our API data, to scan your third-party risk, enables you to have instant visibility across your digital horizon and see where the potential weak spots are for a hacker to exploit. Having this insight can assist with strategic decision making and mitigate any risk of a future attack; saving you money and any preventing any reputational issues.
