In 2020, Russian attackers compromised a SolarWinds software update, inserting malicious code that impacted nearly 18,000 organizations, including major U.S. federal agencies. The cleanup collectively cost US organizations billions between months of remediation, disrupted supply chain operations, reputational damage and customer loss.
Supply chains live and die by optimization. But when optimization creates invisible security risks, entire businesses can grind to a halt. The faster you move materials, the faster you make products, the faster you get paid. Every slowdown is a lost opportunity. Every shutdown is a direct hit to the bottom line.
That brutal efficiency has a hidden cost. The more interconnected your supply chain becomes, the more fragile it gets. In the case of the SolarWinds attack, it was not the company’s internal systems that were first compromised; it was the third-party software they trusted. Increasingly, vendor-supplied Java applications are running quietly inside critical systems, beyond the reach of traditional security tools. So those who are tasked with shielding supply chains from risk require new tools that can neutralize the threat from third party software.
The Challenge of Securing Supply Chains
Supply chain attacks are a favorite for many modern attackers. Supply chain attacks surged by 431% between 2021 and 2023, and has only continued to rise since. This happens because systems are getting more interconnected — which is good for efficiency but at the cost of risk visibility for operators, as well as insufficient security tooling and high financial stakes.
Lack of Visibility
Third-party Java applications are everywhere in supply chain systems, from inventory tracking to logistics orchestration to financial reconciliation. The problem is, you can’t defend what you can’t see. You might be running the smartest and most efficient security team in the country. But if your system connects to third party technology, you have no way of knowing how many attack vectors lead into your system through their black box. You’re just as exposed, and you have no way of knowing or protecting against it.
Attackers know that breaching a single vendor can offer access to hundreds or thousands of customers downstream. They are playing a long game, while defenders are playing blind. 91% of CISOs in charge of supply chain report an increase in third-party cybersecurity incidents and only 3% have full visibility into their supply chains, “including fourth and nth-party relationships.”
Without visibility, vulnerabilities introduced by vendors can sit undetected for months, leaving open doors into your network.
Security Tools Aren’t Currently Built for Supply Chain
Most traditional security tooling was built for environments you own and control. Firewalls, endpoint protection, and WAFs assume that you can inspect traffic, instrument code, and force patches.
Supply chains defy those assumptions. WAFs cannot see inside encrypted API calls between vendor apps. Static scanners identify vulnerabilities but cannot fix them without vendor intervention. And EDR agents often cannot be deployed onto third-party virtual appliances or SaaS integrations.
Meanwhile, it takes organizations an average of 204 days to identify a supply chain breach and another 73 days to contain it. Attackers have months and months to move freely through connected systems while defenders are struggling to even get off the starting line.
Supply Chains Are Prime Targets
The financial incentives for attackers in the supply chain game are massive. The industry’s revenue model depends on rapid movement of goods and, as mentioned above, optimization. Even short-term disruption can spiral into major financial and reputational losses. Attackers know this and they also know that these systems rely on a lot of third party technology.
The average cost of unplanned downtime across all supply chain systems is around $25,000 per hour, but it can get much higher. For larger organizations the cost can go as high as $500,000 per hour and in high value industries like automotive, that number jumps as high as $2.3 million per hour.
So what better place to target with a ransomware attack? A ransomware attack is like a bank robbery: the objective is to get in, get the money and get out as quickly as possible. It is the rare edge case where the perpetrator sadistically wreaks havoc just for fun. They want to get paid, so they’re going to target areas where refusing to pay the ransom costs management the most money. If triage and remediation come with a multimillion-dollar price tag, most teams will opt to pay the ransom, get their systems back up and save face with their customers.
Waratek Secures Supply Chains at Runtime
At Waratek, we tackle this problem by shifting the security focus from identifying ingress points to neutralizing attacks within application runtimes. It’s much easier to identify malicious code inside a Java application and prevent it from executing rather than keeping real-tabs on an entire perimeter. Our Software-Defined Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) does not depend on your third party vendors patching their vulnerabilities to keep you safe.
Here’s what that means for you:
Full Runtime Visibility
Waratek instruments Java applications directly at the JVM layer. This means we can dynamically monitor and enforce security policies inside vendor applications, even when you have no access to the source. We monitor critical functions like memory allocation, file system access, API calls, and deserialization behavior in real time, detecting and blocking attacks before they can impact the supply chain. Instead of waiting for alerts from black-box apps, you see exactly what is happening the moment it happens.
Virtual Patching for Immediate Protection
If you’re waiting for vendors to release patches, you’re playing from behind. And you have no way of guaranteeing that your vendors are doing the same. With Waratek, both known and unknown vulnerabilities inside third-party Java apps can be virtually patched immediately at runtime, dramatically reducing risk of exposure. This transforms reactive patching into proactive protection without requiring any lag in operations, code changes, redeployments, or downtime.
Zero False Positives, Maximum Uptime
False positives generate alert fatigue and unnecessary downtime. Waratek’s runtime policies are based on actual application behavior, not simplistic signature-matching. This allows security teams to block real threats with surgical precision, without causing service outages or operational slowdowns.
Every hour of uptime matters. By eliminating both false alarms and reactive downtime, Waratek keeps supply chains running at full velocity and saves organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars per day.
Control the Risk You Cannot See
Java applications are an integral part of global supply chains because of their portability and maturity. But their flexibility can become a liability. 44 percent of Java services contain a known-exploited vulnerability.
Old, vulnerable Java libraries, deserialization flaws, and RCE vulnerabilities are always lurking inside the applications upon which supply chains rely. Vendors often struggle to patch quickly enough while attackers are actively working to find ingress points. The defenders’ toolbag is lagging behind while the attack surface continues to grow.
Supply chain security is no longer about perimeter strength. It is about controlling hidden risks inside the software. Without runtime control, every third-party app is a potential breach waiting to happen. Waratek gives security teams the visibility, control, and real-time protection they need to neutralize hidden risks without slowing operations.
When every second of uptime equals revenue, your supply chain can only be as profitable as it is resilient.
