Threat Guide
Supply Chain Cyberattacks on SMBs — Risk Assessment Guide
Supply chain attacks compromise your organization by targeting less-secure vendors, software providers, or partners that have access to your systems. The SolarWinds attack affected 18,000 organizations. The MOVEit vulnerability impacted 2,000+ businesses. For SMBs, supply chain risks include the software you run, the managed service providers you trust, and the APIs you integrate.
62%
of organizations were compromised through a third-party vendor or software in 2024
Verizon 2025 DBIR
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How Supply Chain Attacks Works — Step by Step
- Software supply chain: attacker compromises a legitimate software update, inserting malware distributed to all customers
- Vendor access: attacker compromises an MSP or IT service provider that has privileged access to client networks
- Third-party API: insecure API from a supplier or SaaS vendor exposes your customer data
- Open source compromise: malicious packages uploaded to npm, PyPI, or other repositories
- Hardware supply chain: compromised firmware or hardware components before delivery
- Build pipeline attacks: targeting CI/CD pipelines to inject malicious code into software builds
Supply Chain Attacks Impact on SMBs
Supply Chain Attacks SMB Impact: SMBs are increasingly targeted as "stepping stones" to larger enterprise clients — 40% of supply chain attacks specifically target vendors to reach their enterprise customers.
62%
Of organizations compromised through third-party vendor in 2024
Verizon 2025 DBIR
40%
Of supply chain attacks specifically target SMBs to reach enterprise clients
ENISA Threat Landscape 2025
245%
Increase in software supply chain attacks 2020–2025
Sonatype Software Supply Chain Report 2025
$4.6M
Average cost of supply chain breach (higher than average breach cost)
IBM Cost of Data Breach 2025
Prevention Controls
Implement these controls to reduce your supply chain attacks exposure. Prioritize based on your current gaps.
- Vendor security questionnaires and third-party risk scoring before onboarding
- Least-privilege access for all vendors — no vendor should have more access than needed
- Software bill of materials (SBOM) for critical applications
- Monitoring and alerting on vendor access activity
- Regular review and termination of unused vendor access
- Contractual security requirements in vendor agreements
CyberStackHub Tools for Supply Chain Attacks Risk
Score cybersecurity risk across your entire vendor and supplier network
Maps supply chain security requirements from NIST CSF, CMMC, and other frameworks
Vendor access policy and third-party risk management policy reduce supply chain exposure
Identifies over-provisioned vendor access, missing vendor contracts, and monitoring gaps