Celerium
Improving the Overall Cyber Defense Posture of the Manufacturing Supply Chain

In the last six months, we have heard how supply chain problems are affecting consumers. At the same time, it is clear how the threat landscape against these supply chains has evolved. Not only have cyberattacks increased in numbers but a myriad of ransomware attacks has led to ransom demands as a condition for the decryption of data. Threat actors have compromised supply chains to launch large-scale attacks on governments and enterprises alike. In fact, Q1 of 2021 alone saw a 42 percent increase in attacks on the supply chain. Furthermore, attacks on critical infrastructure have also intensified significantly over the past several years.

As hard as businesses have worked to enhance security for hybrid operations, cybercriminals have worked just as diligently to find innovative ways of infiltrating and holding major ransom players in the supply chain. However, more work needs to be done. With the candle burning at both ends, it is time organizations shed the traditional measures to secure their environment and come up with alternative solutions.

This is where Celerium casts its magic. Leveraging its strong history in building threat intelligence sharing solutions, which include secure collaboration capabilities with automated distribution and routing capabilities, the firm transforms cyber defense for both companies and industry sectors. From enabling the largest cybersecurity teams to work effectively with cyberthreat intelligence to empowering even the smallest suppliers to stay current on threats they may be facing, Celerium’s cybersecurity solutions empower supply chains and enterprises of all sizes to stay one step ahead of bad actors. Their tailored solutions help improve supply chain cyber defense within critical infrastructure industries, including defense, heavy equipment manufacturing, and automotive.

At the heart of ransomware crisis is a common theme: the lack of robust processes to identify and successfully manage growing supply-chain risks. The supply chain is a critical place for a prime or hub organization that has many downstream suppliers, all working together pursuant to a contract or a mission. Even if one of those suppliers is compromised, or there is a threat targeting someone in the supply chain or an ongoing activity, there needs to be a way for the stakeholders within the supply chain to collaborate and respond collectively. Celerium’s crown jewel, the Cyber Defense Network (CDN), serves as an alternate means for an enterprise to facilitate cyber and ransomware readiness among its core suppliers and the small-and-medium-sized businesses it relies on. “There are communities inside of and among organizations that share threat intelligence. These communities need to be able to detect, respond, and collaborate, if there is an ongoing event and other similar kinds of activity,” informs Tommy McDowell, general manager and thought leader, Celerium. Historically, that hasn’t been the case. Usually, there is a prime, there are subcontractors, and each individual company has its own cybersecurity program. Nobody has really thought about one key question: How do we respond collectively for the supply chain as if it was an entity? CDN offers that capability.

In essence, CDN is a family of solutions that helps strengthen the overall defense of an enterprise supply chain

In essence, CDN is a family of solutions that helps strengthen the overall defense of an enterprise supply chain. These solutions provide mechanisms for industrial organizations to share cyber threat intelligence information among their suppliers. In addition to empowering cyber defenders to learn, engage, and collaborate, CDN provides community dashboards to enable cyber threat situational awareness and actions such as automation bots that allow suppliers to respond quickly to ever-changing threats. Some of the significant benefits offered by CDN are: it enables communities to create, share, and receive threat information easily and rapidly; enterprises can quickly assess and prioritize the most relevant data to determine a course of action; and lastly, it feeds high-quality intelligence into technology already in use, enhancing its value and responsiveness. Moreover, with CDN, both large and mid-sized cyber defenders can identify responses to and actions on threat data by other community members to determine their response.

Celerium has a special focus on helping the small and medium-sized businesses within a supply chain, as they often lack the resources and skills needed. A part of CDN’s cyber threat intelligence solution “enables small suppliers to stay current on new threats, even if they don’t have dedicated cybersecurity staff,” adds McDowell.

Highlighting the efficacy of Celerium’s solutions is its success story with an international manufacturing company that was being targeted. They were looking for answers to questions that included: ‘how are we being targeted?’ ‘What vulnerabilities are cyber criminals trying to exploit?’ ‘Are they successful in getting it?’ and so on. With Celerium’s CDN, the manufacturing company was able to obtain answers to all of the questions. “Their security operations center can now send alerts and possesses the necessary key detection capabilities. With our help, the client was also able to reduce the time their people spent in detecting, responding, limiting, and potentially stopping the escalation of an attack through one of their internationally distributed supply chains,” reveals McDowell.

Such accomplishments and contributions have helped Celerium grow exponentially over the years. In order to further optimize the outcome of its offerings, the company is working on evolving its solutions and capabilities to make them interoperable. Alongside, the team is looking to move its long history of creating collaboration capabilities and finding solutions to very complex, operational, and technical issues into the supply chain as well as every other sector. “We also offer educational training to the Department of Defense through our CMMC Insights courses, which we created to provide comprehensive training material on the CMMC practices in a given level and help those companies that need to implement CMMC,” states McDowell.

Managing cyber threats within the supply chain doesn’t have to be a daunting task. However, it is crucial organizations take responsibility for their own risk and maintain consistent standards for cybersecurity. With a partner like Celerium, there is no doubt that companies can fortify and improve the overall cyber defense posture of their supply chain seamlessly.