The automotive supply chain is long and complex. A break in the chain at a small, tier 3, single-part producer can be disastrous.

There are plenty of portals and opportunities for "bad guys" to breach security. According to the EY Global Information Security Survey 2018-19, 1.95 billion records containing personal information and other sensitive data were compromised between January 2017 and March 2018, and 550 million phishing emails were sent out by a single campaign during the first quarter of 2018. The average cost of a data breach last year, EY reported, was $3.62 million.

Opportunities do exist for automotive supply chains to protect themselves. One organization, the 3,000-member Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG), last year released the Cyber Security 3rd Party Information Security publication to support industry efforts to protect sensitive data by outlining a unified set of cybersecurity guidelines for automotive trading partners. [Read more]