How to Overcome Challenges In Supply Chain Monitoring
Conquer ‘questionnaire fatigue’ and enhance digital trust
The Rising Demand For Supplier Monitoring
As global supply chains become more interconnected, cybercriminals and nation-state threat actors are increasingly targeting third-party relationships. At the same time, new legal requirements such as NIS2 are raising the bar for supply chain accountability and transparency. This means it’s no longer enough to get your own house in order. Organisations must work proactively and collaboratively across their supplier ecosystem to stay ahead of these threats, while ensuring compliance with the latest regulations.
Supply chain monitoring is a critical step in this approach. Organisations should be able to identify third-party vulnerabilities and verify the security posture of critical suppliers. However, the scale of modern supply chains—often comprising thousands of entities—makes this task daunting, on top of an already overloaded security agenda.
A significant hurdle that organisations face is the sheer volume of risk assessment questionnaires and the fragmented tools used to manage them. Fortunately, innovative solutions are simplifying the process. Here’s a closer look at how AI-powered automations can streamline supplier monitoring and help build digital trust with stakeholders and business partners.
Defeating Questionnaire Fatigue
Today, the primary method for assessing supplier risks is through security questionnaires. These lengthy documents require suppliers to provide detailed information about their cyber security practices, policies, and controls. While the questionnaires play a role in risk management and NIS2 compliance, they also present significant challenges for everyone involved:
- Overwhelming Volume: Organisations often need to manage dozens of questionnaires, creating bottlenecks in procurement, legal, and security teams.
- Inconsistent Formats: Suppliers receive questionnaires from multiple clients, each with unique formats and requirements, leading to duplication of effort.
- Data Overload: Questionnaires generate vast amounts of data that must be reviewed, analysed, and stored securely, placing additional burdens on teams.
- Lack of Transparency: Questionnaires are static documents that cannot be easily shared amongst multiple clients, leaving no other option than to fill in the same information repeatedly.
- Lack of Tracking: Static questionnaires don’t offer the opportunity to track developments in the security posture of suppliers over time.
The result is ‘questionnaire fatigue’ that not only slows down the onboarding of new business relationships, but also increases the likelihood of errors and missed risks. As a result, organisations may not be able to adequately address risks or effectively secure the supply chain. Overall, we see that this approach is counterproductive to business objectives and security management requirements.
Streamlining Supplier Monitoring
To address these challenges, organisations are turning to technology that streamlines supplier monitoring and reduces reliance on traditional questionnaires. These tools use automation, data integration, AI, and continuous monitoring to provide real-time insights into supplier risks. We have explored a range of vendors that specialise in this area, focusing on their suitability for midsize and large distributed companies.
After weighing the options best suited for our clients, Northwave has partnered with OneMore Secure to deliver the most fitting balance between functionality, scalability, and cost. Their ‘Digital Trust Hub’ combines questionnaire automation and continuous monitoring for comprehensive coverage. We’ve found that the intuitive supplier portal minimises questionnaire fatigue and improves collaboration. The platform includes AI-driven risk scoring for actionable insights and offers a scalable pricing structure tailored for distributed companies.
Building Digital Trust Together
The concept of a Digital Trust Hub represents a significant shift in managing supply chain risks. With digital trust, stakeholders have confidence in your business's ability to operate without disruptions, reduce cyber risks, and collaborate transparently.
To earn this trust, you must demonstrate secure and compliant use of data and digital systems across your supply chain, requiring real-time visibility into third-party risks, predictive threat detection, and automated risk management.
Secure collaboration demands embedding security into every decision-making process, from procurement to product development. This involves comprehensive security planning and training for all internal departments and external partners, including critical suppliers.
Focusing on transparency and digital trust in business partnerships aligns security practices and expectations. By making cyber security a strategic focus, allocating sufficient resources, and fostering cooperation, you can drive meaningful progress in protecting your supply chain.
How Northwave Helps Monitor Supply Chains
As an integrated Cyber Security partner, we have many ways to support organisations in managing the complex and time-consuming task of ensuring security and building digital trust in supply chains.
- Strategic Supplier Management Insights - Analyse your supplier landscape and risks to design a structured, pragmatic way for managing trust. Develop stringent contract agreements and a clear governance.
- Supplier Management Implementation & Data Validation - Implement your management and monitoring solution and run it effectively. We can additionally help you validate information provided by your suppliers.
- Streamline and automate supplier monitoring – Benefit from the OneMore Secure platform as an integrated part of the Supplier Risk Management service component in our CISO-as-a-Service. For large company groups and Private Equity firms, we offer specific support through the OneMore Secure platform to manage and maintain oversight into the cyber risks in their subsidiaries and/or investment portfolios.
- Resilience Training with Critical Suppliers - Collaborate with critical suppliers during structured planning sessions and cyber exercises to develop coordinated incident response plans.
We respond to cyber incidents daily, providing us with an up-close view of the substantial ripple effects through supply chains caused by a successful ransomware attack on a single company. The stakes are certainly high, but with the right strategies and commitment, you can meaningfully safeguard your supply chains, protect your business assets, and build essential digital trust.
Would you like to learn more about our comprehensive solutions for NIS2 compliance and effective supply chain risk management? Schedule a free consultation with our managed security experts today. Contact Us
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