As we’ve entered the digital age, new specialities and methods of collaboration have made it easier to work together. But this interconnectedness is not without risk. By relying on others, organizations create a dependency over which they have limited control. Failures experienced by unreliable partners can affect not just a single organization, but also a remarkably large portion of the global economy.

In this report, we draw on Bitsight data from a variety of sources—including third-party relationships, our security scanning technologies, entity mapping, and financial data—to offer a comprehensive picture of what the global, digital supply chain looks like.

We uncover:

• The role of “providers,” or organizations that deliver resources and processes (and, spoiler alert, have their own large supply chains)
• There “hidden pillars” of the global supply chain (i.e. providers who serve a small number of consumers but have significant market share)
• How the security postures of each player—including providers, consumers, and products—factor in
• What CISOs or risk managers can do in the face of this complexity