New challenges in supply chain management: cybersecurity across the supply chain

Abstract

Recent cybersecurity breaches have highlighted the resulting economic, political, and social effects. These incidents highlight that cybersecurity is now a supply chain issue. This should not be surprising given the interconnected digital world that defines organisational ecosystems. Due to their relative ‘newness’, coupled with the complexity of both supply chains and cybersecurity, there is lack of clarity and gaps in the current knowledge base regarding cybersecurity across the supply chain. At the same time, this issue is of critical importance to both practitioners and researchers, and thus needs to be structured in such a way to facilitate a common understanding of what cybersecurity across the supply chain cybersecurity entails and the subsequent research opportunities. Thus, the primary objective of this paper is to develop a research framework for cybersecurity across the supply chain to guide future research. An exploratory research methodology was applied, which relied on multiple sources to develop the research framework, including structured literature reviews, anecdotal evidence, interviews with subject matter experts, and external validation by both practitioners and researchers. The paper concludes by identifying areas that demand further research and with a call for more research on cybersecurity across the supply chain.