Supply Chain Security for Cybersecurity: Third-Party Data Storage

Learn about supply chain attacks through third-party data stores, where breaches of networks belonging to large data aggregators have been reported.

Many modern businesses outsource their data to third-party companies that aggregate, store, process, and proxy information, sometimes on behalf of customers that compete directly with each other.

Such sensitive data does not necessarily relate solely to customers, but may also cover business structure, financial position, strategy and risk exposures. Companies dealing with high-profile mergers and acquisitions have been targeted in the past. In September 2013, it was reported that some networks belonging to large data aggregators had been compromised.

A small botnet was observed exfiltrating information from internal systems of numerous data stores to botnet controllers on the public internet via encrypted channels. The most high-profile victim is a data aggregator that licenses information from businesses and companies for credit decisions, business-to-business marketing and supply chain management. While attackers may have been tracking consumer and business data, fraud experts say information about consumer and business habits and practices is the most valuable.

The victims are credit bureaus for numerous businesses that provide “knowledge-based authentication” for financial transaction requests. This supply chain compromise enables attackers to access valuable information stored through third parties and potentially commit large-scale fraud.