Chapter 9: International Cooperation The immediate focus of the Programme is to push forward on the foundational activities that improve CII cyber supply chain resilience for essential services in Singapore in response to increased digitalisation and changing threats and risks. However, the globally interconnected nature of cyber supply chains means that over time, individual reactions to cyber supply chain risks from individual countries will no longer be sufficient. Singapore will need to raise its engagement and collaboration with international partners further to collectively address global cyber supply chain challenges
9.1.The challenge to overcome: globally connected supply chains require a globally connected response The global nature of the cyber supply chain requires international cooperation for cyber supply chain risk management. Countries are approaching the challenge with isolated efforts, attempting to gain visibility into the cyber supply chain risks and threats facing their critical infrastructure to varying degrees of success. With most technology vendors working on global scale, there is an opportunity to combine efforts between countries to improve the visibility of the cyber supply chain and push for improved cybersecurity and resilience requirements. Large technology vendors have significant market power, making it difficult for CIIOs in individual countries to negotiate cybersecurity requirements on baseline security practices. Additionally, cyber supply chain incidents like SolarWinds are occurring on a global scale and affecting governments and organisations in many countries. CIIOs are facing challenges in understanding if they have been affected by cyber supply chain incidents in a timely manner and being able to limit the blast radius and mitigate the impact quickly when affected. Improved global visibility of the shared cyber supply chain has the potential to improve this for CIIOs. International cooperation can also generate momentum to improve the cybersecurity capabilities of vendors that are common across multiple countries. Standardising the cybersecurity requirements for vendors from multiple countries can improve the bargaining power of purchasers to enforce the requirements.
9.2.The approach: collaboration and cooperation International cooperation to improve the resilience of the global cyber supply chain involves developing collaboration mechanisms for cyber supply chain risk management with international partners and strengthening global cyber supply chain visibility and information and intelligence sharing for improved coordination and response activities.
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