Last weekend a large IT service provider was hit by ransomware in one of its Swedish datacenters. The effects were felt all over the country. Municipalities, government agencies, hospitals, retailers and a cinema chain. Shops closed, a payroll and HR system used by many universities and government agencies went down, and people couldn\u00b4t report their sick leave.<\/p>\n
Most of the affected organisations did nothing wrong themselves. Their systems were simply running in the same place as everyone else\u00b4s.<\/p>\n
This is the supply chain risk in its purest form. And there are technical things you can do about it.<\/p>\n
First, know where your systems actually run. Not just \u2018at the provider\u2019, but which datacenter, which platform and which other systems share it.<\/p>\n
Second, keep your own copy. Backups that the provider can\u00b4t reach, ideally in another location and with immutability. If the provider\u00b4s environment is encrypted, your data shouldn\u00b4t be.<\/p>\n
Third, separate the identities. Your provider\u00b4s admins should use accounts that only work in your environment, with a second factor and from devices they control. A single admin account that reaches all customers is a single point of failure for all of them.<\/p>\n
Fourth, monitor the connections. Log what the provider does in your environment and send it to your own SOC.<\/p>\n
Fifth, practise the day the provider is gone. Which systems must work, and how do you run them without the provider?<\/p>\n
You can outsource the operation. You can\u00b4t outsource the consequences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last weekend a large IT service provider was hit by ransomware in one of its Swedish datacenters. The effects were felt all over the country. Municipalities, government agencies, hospitals, retailers and a cinema chain. Shops closed, a payroll and HR system used by many universities and government agencies went down, and people couldn\u00b4t report their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,13],"tags":[42,41,137],"class_list":["post-1415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security-architecture","category-technology","tag-ransomware","tag-service-providers","tag-supply-chain"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowmoor.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowmoor.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowmoor.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowmoor.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowmoor.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crowmoor.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1464,"href":"https:\/\/crowmoor.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1415\/revisions\/1464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowmoor.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowmoor.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowmoor.se\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}