Supply Chain Security

43 percent of German supply chains compromised by ransomware

Trend Micro, a provider of cybersecurity solutions, released a new study showing that companies are increasingly at risk from ransomware because of their extensive supply chains. For example, 43 percent of the German companies surveyed have had companies in their supply chain affected by a ransomware attack. The developments are particularly explosive because potentially less well-secured SMEs make up a significant part of the supply chain for more than a third of German companies.

A year ago, an attack on an IT management software vendor led to the compromise of numerous managed services providers and thousands of downstream customers. Yet only 40 percent of companies in Germany share their knowledge of ransomware attacks with their suppliers. In addition, one-third of all respondents in Germany say they do not share potentially useful information about these cyberthreats with their partners.

One possible reason is that companies do not have this information to pass on in the first place. This is because their ability to detect suspicious activity related to ransomware attacks is worryingly low: only 20 percent of German companies are able to detect lateral movement, i.e. the movement of an attacker within their network. Also in need of significant improvement are the detection rates for the initial intrusion into their systems, the outflow of data, the actual ransomware payload and the misuse of actually legitimate tools such as PSexec or Cobalt Strike.