Analyst Insight: Top leadership involvement in governing IT risk strategies and identifying the right practices to manage those risks is a requirement for any organization looking to have effective supply chain security. Today's IT landscape requires an accelerated level of knowledge sharing of IT risk practices and solutions, both with suppliers and within the enterprise. Leaders have to change how information is communicated and shared throughout the organization. - Andrea Stroud, research program manager, APQC

The expansion of global supply chains has meant an exponential growth of the risk of disruptions to those networks. Catastrophic events, such as the Japanese earthquake and Hurricane Katrina, have highlighted the need for analysis of disruption risk and development of mitigation plans to cope with them. In addition, trends such as globalization, heavy reliance on transportation and communication infrastructures, and lean manufacturing have led to an increase in the vulnerability of supply networks. Furthermore, nodes on supply chains are very often interrelated, causing these vulnerabilities to propagate rapidly.