It's no longer enough to simply ensure that your organization's systems and enterprise web presence are secure. Your risk management program needs to look beyond the perimeter of your organization to properly vet the third and fourth-party vendors who will have access to your data without being subject to your internal risk management process. The use of third parties in your supply chain or for data handling create potential risks that can be compounded by these third-party weaknesses.

A simple DLL file was the catalyst to the most devastating cyberattack against the United States by nation-state hackers. This cinematic breach demonstrates the formidable potency of DLL hijacking and its ability to dismantle entire organizations with a single infected file. DLL hijacking is a method of injecting malicious code into an application by exploiting the way some Windows applications search and load Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL).

In December 2020, the U.S government announced that it fell victim to what is believed to be the largest security breach in the nation's history. The breach occurred through an innocuous IT update from the Government's network monitoring vendor, SolarWinds. This monumental breach exposes a novel and powerful method of clandestinely penetrating even the most sophisticated security defenses through third-party vendors - supply chain attacks.