Global supply chain resilience: what IAM and risk teams should note

TL;DR: Global supply chains remain vulnerable to cascading disruption from pandemics, geopolitics, supplier instability, weather, and cyberattacks, according to Pathlock. The practical lesson is that resilience now depends on visibility, contingency planning, and diversified sourcing rather than cost optimisation alone.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Pathlock: Introduction to Global Supply Chains and supply chain risk mitigation

By the numbers:

• A report produced by Dr John Lee and published by the United States Studies Centre states that 51000 companies were impacted globally, with direct suppliers only in the Wuhan region of China.
• 25% of the Chief Supply Chain Officers are, ficers are confident that their networks are highly resilient.
• Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts.

Questions worth separating out

Q: How should organisations reduce supply chain concentration risk?

A: They should identify every critical dependency that rests on one supplier, one geography, or one transport path, then create approved alternatives before disruption occurs.

Q: Why do just-in-time models fail during major disruptions?

A: Just-in-time models fail because they remove slack from the system.

Q: How can teams know whether their supply chain resilience is real?

A: Resilience is real only if the organisation has tested alternate suppliers, rerouting options, recovery ownership, and decision thresholds under realistic scenarios.

Practitioner guidance

• Build a tiered dependency map Document tier one, tier two, and critical upstream dependencies for each essential product or service, then assign owners for each handoff and constraint.
• Replace single-source assumptions with dual-path planning Identify where one supplier, one region, or one transport path creates concentration risk and pre-approve alternate sourcing or routing options.
• Stress-test disruption scenarios Run simulations for port closures, border restrictions, supplier insolvency, and cyber incidents so response teams can rehearse decisions before real disruption arrives.

What's in the full article

Pathlock's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• The article expands on specific supply chain disruption categories, including economic, environmental, geopolitical, and internal risks.
• It discusses the shift from single-source and just-in-time models toward redundancy, stress testing, and contingency planning.
• It outlines practical mitigation tactics such as supplier diversification, geographic decentralisation, and data-driven monitoring.
• It includes the pandemic as a case example of how regional disruption cascaded into global shortages and logistics failure.

👉 Read Pathlock's analysis of global supply chain risk and resilience →

Global supply chain resilience: what IAM and risk teams should note?

Explore further

View Full Forum →  |  NHI Foundation Course →