A Risk Assessment Methodology for Supply Chain Tracking Services

The supply chain (SC) encompasses various assets and stakeholders covering the production, storage, transportation, and sales processes. SC tracking services are essential for maintaining and verifying the proper state of transferred goods by gathering, exchanging, and maintaining state information such as the temperature or humidity level of products throughout their supply chain lifecycle. Supply chain tracking involves various stakeholders and systems like IoT, cloud services, and typical IT systems, and it is subject to various security threats and risks. In this paper, we propose a risk assessment methodology specifically focusing on supply chain tracking services. The proposed methodology relies on eliciting the strategic business and technical requirements of SC tracking systems, the assessment of targeted threat agents and threats, and their mapping to key operational components. To demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed methodology, a risk assessment was performed based on functional and security requirements in a real-case scenario. Finally, we discuss various challenges relevant to the development and implementation of smart SC tracking systems, as well as the disadvantages associated with their costs and the subsequent stages in the SC ecosystem.