Great Articles on Supply Chain Security

This last week saw two great new articles on supply chain security in two different industries: the first from Wired Magazine on the casino gaming industry, and the second from Dark Reading on the data breaches in various defense company networks through security authentication devices.

Counterfeit Chips Traced to Weapon Programs

Last week, Wired Magazine reported on the findings regarding a large number of counterfeit military IC’s purchased from the company VisionTech by the US Navy. Business Insider published a similar article with slightly more alarmist leanings. Both articles discuss the worst-case scenario: foreign installed ‘Trojan Horses’ found in counterfeit ICs that have self-destruct timers or watch for specific input triggers to stop working (‘Kill Switches’).

Adding an ‘Anti-Counterfeiting Executive Agent’ Fails to Make 2011 Defense Authorization Bill

The headline on InsideDefense.com last week was that the provision to add a Supply Chain Executive Agent to address counterfeiting was dropped from the Defense Authorization Bill.

This means it is still everyone’s problem . . . and no one person’s.