In businesses, ‘Technology is blood’ connects the entire world in any device for various purposes like sharing information, effective communication, reducing labor cost and time, storing data, having effective planning, enabling track and trace, simplifying the work, and so on. Also, technological advancement is necessary for a fast-changing environment to face the challenges of competitors. Many companies experienced the necessity of firm IT development after the COVID-19 pandemic as they were hard to strive for during COVID-19 due to manual or basic technological practices. More than, technology advancement, it is oblique to understand the risk involved in doing so.
What is a Cyberattack?
Cyber attack is a disaster to the business, it is a threat to steal data, hack data, or cause damage to the system and operations, which results in financial loss, ruining the reputation of the company, facing regulatory fines due to the failure of protecting privacy data, operational disruptions, supply chain disruption, losing customer and suppliers trust, breaking customer and supplier relationship, total corruption in restoring data and back to work, financial loss occurrence, losing banker’s credibility and more.
According to Statista.com recorded in March 2024, the United States has 5,381 data centers following Germany's 521 data centers, the United Kingdom's 514 data centers, China's 449 data centers, Canada 336 data centers and the rest of the countries are fewer than the above countries. Where, the US has the most number of data centers, approx. 50% of the entire world's data centers. Evaluating data from, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation Internet Crime Report complaints received from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), the number of complaints received in 2023 is 88% increased compared to the 2019 complaints record and the cost of loss due to the crimes increased in 2023 by 257% compared to 2019. However, the figure below shows the last 10 years of Internet crime complaints and the loss of crime in Billion USD. In recent years, the percentage of cybercrime has drastically increased, and many businesses have been affected due to the impact.
US Cyber Attack Complaints - 10 Years
US Cyber Crime Loss - 10 Years
It is understood that technological improvement is a need in upcoming years to serve customers on their demand (on time, good quality, and better price), and it is noticed that, in the last decade there has been a huge impact on crime numbers as well as the cost of crime. Let us summarize the major cyber-attacks in 2023 to examine how they have impacted supply chain operations directly and indirectly.
- Airbus SC Attack - January 2023
This attack happened through their Customer, Turkish Airlines employee account by threat actor USDoD.
- University of California San Francisco SC Attack - February 2023
UCSC experienced a Phishing attack through 11 e-mail accounts to steal the data and demanded a ransom of USD 3 Million, finally settled and retrieved the data by paying USD 1.14 Million.
- Dollar Tree - August 2023
Dollar Tree is a chain of discount store companies in the US and Canada, impacted by a data breach and around 2 million individuals were affected by this cyber attack. This impact has happened by a hacker accessing Zeroed-In Technologies, a service provider of Dollar Tree.
- DP World Australia Hack - November 2023
DP World Australia noticed that hackers had accessed their corporate network (stolen employee data), soon they disconnected the internet and stopped Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Fremantle for 3 days and restored them.
- Norton Ransomware Attack - May 2023
Hackers stole 2.5 million personal data (Patients and employees) from Norton Healthcare and demanded ransom, However, they refused to pay the ransom.
- Johnson Controls Ransomware attack - September 2023
Hackers have stolen 27TB from John Controls and demanded a ransom of USD 51 million, the company settled with USD 27 Million to retrieve the operation.
- Rapid Reset Attack - August 2023
HTTP/2 protocol has vulnerability to denial of service as exploited in the wild in August 2023, whereas Cloudflare was able to help mitigate the impact by blocking the attacks.
- Russia-Ukraine Cyber War
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, more than the war in the road, air, and water, the cyber war attacked Ukraine to interrupt their supply chain operations from 2023 to till. Russian hackers have accessed Ukrainian Telecommunications since May 2023.
- Chinese Intelligence hacked the US government's Microsoft e-mail
Chinese hackers accessed over two dozen US government institutions via Microsoft e-mail to steal government data
Getting connected to the digital world by practicing digital supply chain network software among the company, supplier, customer and all stakeholders is a primary project to make the business successful. Post COVID-19, more than the companies, the hackers understood how the supply chain corrupts the businesses themselves. Thus, hackers target more in supply chain software to jumble company operations enabling the company to face economic impact, which results in the Country's overall trading.
Companies need to have a well-updated Information Technology (IT) Team to secure data and operations with updated Cyber security measures and monitor every operation within the company to detect the impact as soon as the problem arises to mitigate the impact volume.
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