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abundant weak points, it remains at high risk.
Following continued large-scale cyberattacks affecting major corporations, supply chain businesses are, more than ever, reconsidering how they vet and partner with third parties. After all, vendors may not necessarily follow the same cybersecurity practices, which can lead hackers to intercept sensitive data and find hidden routes into systems.
Crucially, all companies in supply chains must take greater care to vet the vendors they work with. That can mean holding them to the same standards you expect of internal operations, running regular risk assessments, and embedding certain security measures into contractual agreements.
Regulatory pressure and compliance expectations
Regardless of where companies are based, there will always be compliance and regulatory standards they need to follow.
For example, companies dealing with suppliers and vendors in the EU will need to follow standards set by the General Data Protection Regulation( GDPR), which dictates how consumer data should be handled and processed, and how such measures are communicated to the public.
Failure to comply with the GDPR( and other regulations), even by partnering with a lax vendor, can lead to high fines and reputational damage. The EU has imposed fines totaling hundreds of millions of dollars upon multinational companies since the regulation debuted in 2018.
The compliance overhead to operate within the EU has also been expanded by the Digital Operational Resilience Act( DORA) which became applicable earlier this year in January 2025.
As such, regulators demand that supply chain companies adhere to
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