Supply chains are a fact of life for all of us. They are the manifestation of human collaboration, the ability to work together, and have been around from the moment we left our hunter-gatherer past behind us. Organisations and individuals depend on an ever more complex network of suppliers in the physical and digital world to get things done. But supply chains are not only the enabler – too often they are the vulnerable back door to an organisation. A point our adversaries have recognised for some time.

We are delighted to host this event with Oxford Brookes University, which focuses on managing supply chain risk by identifying who is critical to our business delivery, improving the efficiency of managing physical and digital suppliers, and helping small businesses become more secure. Because despite being the least likely to have the resources, time or knowledge to improve their digital resilience, small and micro businesses constitute so much of our supply chain. We will also explore why ensuring the integrity of our supply chain is a team sport and why collaboration is the best way to reduce the potential for our suppliers to be an inadvertent latter-day fifth column, undermining us from within.