Global supply chains security: a comparative analysis of emerging threats and traceability solutions

Abstract

Purpose: the purpose of this study is to increase awareness of current supply chain security-related issues by providing an extensive analysis of existing supply chain security solutions and their limitations. The security of supply chains has received increasing attention from researchers, due to the emerging risks associated with the supply chains distributed nature. The increase in risk in supply chains comes from threats that are inherently similar regardless of the type of supply chain, thus, requiring similar defence mechanisms. Being able to identify the types of threats, the capabilities of adversaries, and the system requirements will help developers to build more effective defences.

Methodology/approach: in this work, we provide an analysis of the threats, possible attacks, and traceability solutions for supply chains, and highlight outstanding problems. In particular, we focus on three types of supply chains: electronic, food, and pharmaceutical that are considered prime targets for cyberattacks. We introduce a systematic categorization of threats and discuss emerging solutions for prevention and mitigation.

Findings: our study shows that the current traceability solutions for supply chain systems do not offer a broadened security analysis and fail to provide extensive protection against cyberattacks. Furthermore, global supply chains face common challenges, as there are still unresolved issues, especially those related to the increasing supply chain complexity and interconnectivity, where cyberattacks are spread across suppliers.

Originality: this is the first time that a systematic categorization of general threats for supply chain is made based on an existing threat model for hardware supply chain.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Betul Gokkaya: orcid.org/0009-0009-3632-9768

ORCID for Erisa Karafili: orcid.org/0000-0002-8250-4389

ORCID for Leonardo Aniello: orcid.org/0000-0003-2886-8445

ORCID for Basel Halak: orcid.org/0000-0003-3470-7226

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