The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a CTPAT alert late January warning of cyber threats arising from many CTPAT members working from home during the pandemic. CBP stated that harmful individuals may try to exploit weaknesses associated with remote work, such as email phishing attacks with malicious links.
Just two weeks prior, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which operates under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, issued a report warning that “threat actors are using phishing and other vectors to exploit poor cyber hygiene practices within a victims’ cloud services configuration.” The report warned that these actors may be able to access company data stored in a cloud environment, impacting the organization’s supply chain or compromising products in transit.
CTPAT regularly alerts its members to specific security matters in an effort to raise awareness about the importance of being cautious with supply chain security especially as its recognized as a requirement by the latest Minimum Security Criteria (MSC) rolled out by CBP late last year.
AIAG’s Supply Chain Security (CTPAT) workgroup emphasizes this strongly among their full supply chains, as cybersecurity is the key to safeguarding their most precious assets: intellectual property, customer information, financial data, employee records, etc.