Summer Myatt
Tuesday’s Supply Chain Cybersecurity: Revelations and Innovations Forum, hosted by ExecutiveBiz Events, brought together cybersecurity experts to study recent industry-disrupting cyber attacks and garner important insights into how federal and commercial organizations can independently implement supply chain risk management measures and meet elevated cybersecurity standards in order to better protect themselves against future threats.
Following an opening keynote address delivered by Attivo Networks’ CTO Tony Cole, the event’s mid-day keynote speakers, Jeff Jorge, principal and firm leader of Baker Tilly, and Leo Alvarez, Baker Tilly’s director and certified federal contracts manager, took the platform to examine the recent regulatory changes influencing supply chain cybersecurity today as well as the impact these shifts have on the acquisition landscape and the implications they pose for the future.
If you missed today’s forum, please visit the ExecutiveBiz Events page to watch the platform’s Supply Chain Cybersecurity: Revelations and Innovations Forum and other recent GovCon webinars.
Jeff Jorge began his keynote address with a presentation featuring an in-depth exploration of the guideposts shaping global supply chains today and a breakdown of which factors organizations can control in their efforts to transition from reactive to anticipatory of cyber attacks.
He shared that organizations must leverage insights based on geopolitical and socioeconomic risk factors, alongside industry disruptions caused by competitors to reexamine how they manage their supply chain to remain resilient and competitive in a rapidly evolving landscape.
“In the face of the current reality of how life works for supply chain, you may have to revisit or consider things that prior to this point weren’t on the table, and you may have to change the DNA of your supply chain.”
Jorge also said that preventative measures and increased cyber resilience begins at the planning phase. He noted that an organization’s maturity levels across factors such as “what-if” planning, disruption management and demand forecasting and shaping can affect supply chain risk management capabilities.
He posed the question, “So how do you take these changes, these things that can make your supply chain more resilient, and make them sustainable for the long term?”
Next, Leo Alvarez took the reins of the presentation to delve deeper into the influence that industry-shaking events like COVID-19 and the historic 2020 Solarwinds attack had on the federal acquisition process and the relationships between contractors and their vendors.
He shared that his first-hand experience working with clients on their cybersecurity capabilities has given him important insight into what factors better situate companies for organizational durability.
“Those organizations that had good visibility into their third party ecosystem and had a good sense of the security practices of critical suppliers were much more well-positioned than organizations with loose controls in that area.”
To mitigate supplier risk and continue booking federal contracts, Alvarez said, companies must invest more in complying with the unique standards set forth for critical software and take a more active role in implementing robust security practices.
“As agencies begin to shift their focus in this area, it’s important for contractors to consider how they might assess systems, policies and processes to better understand their own supply chains and effectively manage.”
To hear Jeff Jorge’s and Leo Alvarez’s full mid-day keynote addresses detailing supply chain risk management best practices, visit the ExecutiveBiz Events page, where you can watch the full Supply Chain Cybersecurity: Revelations and Innovations Forum on-demand.
ExecutiveBiz Events’ next can’t-miss webinar is the Dual-Use Technology in Space Defense Forum, during which leading federal and commercial executives in the space defense area will discuss how the U.S. Space Force and other critical agencies are leveraging dual-use technologies to remain competitive against the nation’s adversaries as the democratization of space continues to develop.
William Nelson, director of the U.S. Army’s Assured Position, Navigation and Timing Cross-Functional Team, will deliver the event’s keynote address to detail the service branch’s strategies, priorities and concerns as it continues to integrate dual-use technology in the synchronization of space capability development efforts.
Visit ExecutiveBiz.com to register for the platform’s Dual-Use Technology in Space Defense Forum on November 9th.
