Toward a secure supply chain: A system's perspective

Abstract

Security management has become a critical topic that supply systems have to handle on a daily basis. An integrated view is not in place yet, despite that related studies have existed in disparate pieces and keep on emerging. This paper seeks an essential paradigm shift to design/management for security (DMfSec) within the context of supply chain management. The first part is devoted to defining a new discipline of security centric supply chain management (SecSCM). We identify its fundamental tasks and requirements aided by a metaphor borrowed from information security. The second part is a discussion of a potential technical roadmap. Vital and integral to this initiative, we firstly propose the referential taxonomy that systematically accounts for security constraints, requirements, instruments and management, and investigate its relationship to underlying supply chain constructs. Secondly, with the taxonomy in hand, we present modeling issues based on dependency representation and probabilistic analysis, which are suitable for security management. Lastly we consider key tasks in DMfSec and SecSCM. With an emphasis on elaboration of challenges and requirements and employing a process and system oriented perspective, this paper intends to start rather than conclude an adventure into this vast interdisciplinary field.