February 28, 2017

Cybersecurity in Supply Chain for DoD

In 2017, the Department of Defense issued new cybersecurity compliance requirements for manufacturers in its supply chain. MxD sponsored a study to assess how small and mid-size American manufacturers were dealing with the new requirements, known as DFARS, and how difficult they were finding it to comply with the 109 new rules.

Outcome

The study found that average compliance with the new DFARS cybersecurity regulations was low. One of the companies studied was compliant on just 13 percent of the regulations, partially compliant on 37 percent and non-compliant on 49 percent. The study also identified ways to fix the problems and substantially raise the manufacturers’ compliance performance. MxD presented these findings to the Department of Defense, which has awarded $1 million in additional funding to kick-start the development of training and tools tailored to the needs of manufacturers of all sizes.