BY BEN AMES, SENIOR NEWS EDITOR
CYBER SECURITY
TECHNOLOGY
COMPUTER HACKERS LOOM LARGE IN NEWSPAPERheadlines and Hollywood movies, but transportation andsupply chain workers haven’t traditionally seen them as areal threat. After all, driving a truck or a forklift meant youwere seldom even near a computer keyboard, and there’snothing digital about booking freight loads using a clipboard and a phone.
However, in the past five years, the logistics industryhas been awash in cybertrends like supply chain digitalization, the Internet of Things (IoT), and the expanded useof electronic logging devices (ELDs), not to mention thesmartphones that most Americans carry in their pockets orpurses these days.
Hackers have taken notice, and in recent months, they’verung up a string of successful attacks on supply chain stalwarts such as the digital freight broker truckstop.com, oceancarrier Mediterranean Shipping Co. (MSC), freight brokerage Total Quality Logistics (TQL), Australian third-partylogistics service provider Toll Group, and transportationprovider Roadrunner Transportation Systems Inc.
Most of those attacks used “ransomware” to lock down
the victims’ computer networks, hobbling their logistics
operations until they cracked the code or paid a ransom to
the data-kidnappers. As a rule, the targets of these cyber-
criminals do not disclose the details of the extortion to
avoid encouraging future attacks.
The financial damage aside, the mere act of freezing acompany’s operations for a few days can damage the victim’s reputation. Even the names of the bugs and virusesdeployed by hackers sound frightening, including malware like Azorult, Hawkeye, Kwampirs, Locky, Lokibot,Nanocore, Netwired, Remcos, and Shamoon.
Despite the growing danger posed by cyberthreats, logistics firms can follow some basic rules to greatly reduce theirexposure, such as educating employees, putting proper network controls in place, and creating disaster recovery plans.
PROTECT THE WEAKEST LINK
One way companies can protect themselves is by defininga single set of best practices for all employees, regardlessof their role in the organization, says Chris Sandberg, vicepresident of information security for supply chain technology company Trimble Transportation.
Trimble, a provider of fleet management and transpor
Hackers are targeting transportation firms as the industry embraces
digitalization, the IoT, and smartphone apps. But there are protectivesteps these firms can take, experts say.Supply chainlooks to cyberself-defense
