Is lack of visibility in your Cyber Security causing you great harm?

In a recent article by Pymnts.com, the high risks associated with health care’s current cyber security maturity levels were highlighted. They were not encouraging.

Is your cyber security a high risk too?

If you say no, are you sure?

A huge problem in any company is in knowing all the intersection points where cyber thieves can gain access to your data. If you don’t know all the access areas, you are vulnerable.

So what to do?

How to care for all of the sensitive data you have on your suppliers, supply chains, and customers?

First, you need to have visibility throughout your supply chains. This means that your performance metrics align with your strategy and your dashboards are set up to monitor that alignment.

It also means you must have designed and documented exactly what is being done where. Here’s where things usually fall apart.

Documentation is often considered too cumbersome, too time consuming, and too bureaucratic to bother with.

But that means you don’t know what is where. You don’t have transparent operations.

Getting transparency and visibility is where frameworks such as SCOR come into play.

Processes are aligned to customer requirements and specific metrics are embedded into the processes from the start by embedding IT into all supply chain project work from the beginning. Due to the close alignment, you get to “see” real time performance AND you know exactly where your IT is connected to the outside world and where vulnerabilities are located for your supply chains. If you embed this same framework accountability into all your IT work to enable not only your supply chains, but all of the supporting functional area service, then you get the same understanding across your entire company. The hierarchy remains the same no matter where you are in the company. This allows for rapid cross-functional visibility of cyber areas of concern.

It allows all functional areas and all business units to communicate without having to interpret what is being said. Everyone uses the same basic definitions and strategic focus. If and when customization occurs, it is adopted to accommodate wide use around the entire company. This differs from often used specific uses in one area, and with tweaks, a specific use in another area, and on and on. All of which leads to a lack of visibility and alignment.

Due to this visibility and transparency, you are able to “see” where your weaknesses are located so that you can accurately target what needs to be done where right now.

Is work required to align and enable this remedy to your visibility woes?

Absolutely

But understand; hackers are already doing their work.

Are you?

Key words and concepts: supply chain, supply chain management, metrics, IT, change, SCOR, cyber security, health care, visibility, transparency, framework

About the author: Cynthia Kalina-Kaminsky with Process & Strategy consults with and provides training for organizations eager to increase their competitive value by helping enable growth, align performance, make and move product (even when the product is electrons). She is teaching SCOR (Supply Chain Operations Reference model) in Baton Rouge this October. SCOR is the framework Fortune 500 companies use to increase their performance.