Procurement in the News 03/12/2020 - COVID Cold Supply Chain Hacked

The Cold Supply Chains that are supporting COVID19 Vaccinations have come under cyber attack by sophisticated hackers that indicates the involvement of a Nation State. There has been allegations in the West of Russian interference and espionage around the development of a Vaccine for COVID19.

Cold Supply Chains are kinda how they read - they involve a variety of processes and logistics to keep products cold. This isn’t something extraordinary and perishables, such as food (think of the Bananas that arrive to your home perfectly ripe each week). However, the issue with COVID19 Vaccines created by Pfizer/BioNTech require storage and transportation at -70 degrees centigrade. That’s cold.

The Cold Supply Chain, which will include transportation, logistics, warehousing and manufacturers have been targeted.

The hacking of the Cold Supply Chain was via sophisticated phishing which simply means the use of emails to capture details of the unaware recipient. We don’t know if these hacks were successful but it highlights the new for extreme levels of cyber security across every aspect of the Supply Chain.