Managing supply chain and third party risk should be a core component of any cyber security strategy. The cyber security risks of your suppliers and third parties are also your risks – you are only as strong as your weakest link.
Effective cyber supply chain risk management ensures, as much as possible, the secure supply of products and services throughout their lifetime. This includes their design, manufacture, delivery, maintenance, decommissioning and disposal. As such, cyber supply chain risk management forms a significant component of any organisation’s overall cyber security strategy.
If products or services access valuable systems, operate with privileged access or have control over a large portion of a cyber supply chain, they may represent a weakness that could be exploited by malicious cyber actors. In such cases, this could have wide-reaching and harmful consequences.
CASE STUDY 4: AKIRA SONICWALL EXPLOITATION
In August 2025, numerous organisations across Australia reported to ASD’s ACSC that they had been impacted by ransomware incidents. Thanks to proactive reporting from multiple organisations, ASD’s ACSC was able to analyse the combined technical data and identify a known SonicWall vulnerability being actively exploited to gain unauthorised access and deploy ransomware. ASD’s ACSC was then able to match the observed activity to the known tactics and behaviour of the Akira ransomware group, highlighting the potential scale and national impact.
ASD’s ACSC conducted scans to identify potentially vulnerable organisations, identifying almost 1,000 potentially vulnerable devices and around 40 potentially vulnerable Australian organisations, many of them critical infrastructure entities.
ASD’s ACSC proactively notified these potentially vulnerable organisations and published a public alert, providing Australian organisations with guidance issued by the vendor on how to protect their devices and remediate the vulnerability. Following the publication of the alert, ASD’s ACSC observed a reduction in reported incidents using similar techniques against Australian organisations.
When organisations report incidents, vulnerabilities, and data such as Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) to ASD’s ACSC, they help protect not only themselves but also the entire Australian community.
