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As corporations contemplate the ever-increasing complexity of their business transactions, the question of risk management often, or should often, come up. Discussions often center on probabilities of disrupting events, which, unfortunately, often have little real science to support them. Identifying the sources of risk and predicting how it will affect us are more of an art than a science. Therefore, understanding specific vulnerabilities and their impact, and taking action to sustain the business (continuity planning) if a disruption does occur has become a primary focus. Better methods of risk avoidance coupled with building continuity or resiliency into systems and processes has yielded more effective results. In addition, progress in both stabilizing the supply chain’s response to risk as well as in continuity planning has yielded ROI, since business reviews and cross-functional dialogs can occur. These efforts often result in overall improvement in process and information availability. The topic of risk management is certainly a vast domain which we have written about often. In this brief report, we will limit our discussion to technology solutions for risk management. The Supply Chain Risk Management Technology market, if one can call it that, is a growing but fragmented market. The topic is large, and has been made confusing by buzz words and bloggers who write about supply chain risk and just what can be done about it. Here, we are going to attempt to pull together the various segments and give a brief overview. We promise lots more depth on this topic! The internet is an open world, much like the cantina scene in Star Wars. Order is maintained by watching your own back. So the corporate market for security products is a very well defined and growing segment. With social concerns, more government activism under the Obama Administration promises more compliance and regulation, increasing the necessity for functionality and process upgrades by corporations. The rapidly changing nature of devices, networks, and data storage methods has given the CIO a big headache. And that headache can only grow with more regulation. The supply chain, on the other hand, is a federation of disparate, multi-country, multi- legislative and multi-standard universes. It looks organized, but under the surface, it’s fraught with danger. And with the increasing choices of faster but leaner (cheaper) supply chains, it is no longer at all clear who is actually protecting your product or your employees while they travel, or who protects your facilities and your brand. The dirty underside of the supply chain is filled with fraud, waste, damaged or “lost” goods, so- called “unplanned events” and the growing menace of tainted or counterfeit products: in other words, uncertainty.
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