For many manufacturers, most of the work is outsourced.
Most companies have struck agreements with third parties to contract employees under a different banner to carry out their work. This is typically more efficient than attempting to hire one’s own employees to handle the field representation of their services, and this is owed to compartmentalized specialization. The home base company focuses on the corporate upkeep while contractors who specialize at arriving on-site to knock out the repairs, maintenance, updating or other tasks are better equipped for it.
However, this also creates a security problem for the corporate level of the hierarchy. More often than not, manufacturers will have a wide spectrum of services and goods that they can provide, and for every new item they add to the checklist, there are additional safeguards that must be taken to ensure that it’s being manufactured, quality-assured and sold correctly. As such, more vendors are hired from different companies with different skill sets, and chances are that most of these companies will use their own software to connect their employees to the business. Some will require desktop access while others provide apps for iPhone and Android, and others yet will provide a PC program to tap into the network.
The numbers are sobering for unprotected businesses.
This continuous expansion is what has resulted in at least 33 percent of the manufacturers out there utilizing over 25 third-party companies to tackle their development, sales, maintenance and other necessary supportive field work. Another 10 percent relied on a staggering 200 or more vendors to stay on top of their business. This is a critical risk since 90 percent of the data breaches that occur to a company will cost a minimum of $190,000 while the other 10 percent runs over three quarters of a million to correct the course and repair the symptoms of data loss. This, of course, becomes ever more possible when there are so many different software platforms that have access to a single network.
As a business-owner, there are steps that can be taken to manage multiple-party service models.
A popular solution that many businesses are turning to is OneLogin, a mediator that dramatically improves business security by wrapping up the multifarious vendor interfaces into a single sign on system that secures credentials with a multifactor authentication backup and a host of mediation strategies that provide a barrier between the manufacturer’s network and the potential vectors that are field representatives of third-party origin. No matter what hardware or software platform the vendors are expected to use, OneLogin tidies up the software clutter and draws it all into one point to keep hackers and malicious software from reaching databases and claiming sensitive information.
Going forward, more IT managers will find themselves turning to the ever-essential assistance of such network mediation services to take the pressure off. Ironically, such mediation services are also a form of third-party representation: a testament to the importance of interconnected businesses in this fast-paced day and age.