When people talk about cybersecurity, the spotlight these days usually swings to AI-boosted malware and splashy ransomware takedowns. But in the trenches, the breach that wrecks your quarter often starts with something painfully ordinary: an email thread with a trusted vendor.
If you operate anything that moves boxes or manages logistics, you live in the world of purchase orders, invoices, maintenance notices, and delivery updates. That world is a goldmine for criminals. The “smarter” and more connected your operations become, the more a single compromised supplier inbox can ripple into expensive downtime.
For example, plenty of manufacturers and warehouses rely on automated storage and retrieval systems. Strong warehouse inventory management practices help them maintain efficiency and meet demand consistently.
But whichever vendor you use, the point is that your operations are now cyber-physical, and cyber-physical systems are uniquely exposed to boring-but-deadly email risk.
[Source: Pexels]
Unlocked Front Door
This year’s Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report analyzed 22,052 security incidents and 12,195 confirmed data breaches. Ransomware was present in 44% of breaches, up from 32% last year. Just as critical, third-party involvement doubled to 30% of breaches.
That means your partners and vendors are statistically a huge part of the problem set.
If you’re thinking, “Sure, but that’s not us,” look at the FBI’s latest numbers. In 2024 alone, reported Business Email Compromise losses hit $2.77 billion in the U.S., so these are not edge-case incidents.
Vulnerability of Manufacturers and Logistics
Attackers love exploiting the seams between IT and operations. Think purchase orders getting rerouted to the wrong account and support tickets installing “updates” on edge devices.
According to the Verizon report mentioned above, exploitation of vulnerabilities as an initial access vector climbed to 20%, and edge devices/VPNs saw a sharp rise as targets. Even more worryingly, organizations fully remediated only about 54% of those issues, taking a median of 32 days to do it.
Layer onto that the human factor. The report still attributes roughly 60% of breaches to the “human element,” and the pattern we see is simple: a believable message from a familiar partner gets a pass. Change one routing number on a maintenance invoice, and the fraud may not be discovered for weeks.
Unique Challenge
If you’re like most small to midsize operations, email is where purchasing, service, production, and finance intersect. It’s also where policy is the vaguest. People do what keeps the line moving.
This is where adapting a deliberately “email-centric” security posture pays off. We have a solid protection against phishing attacks explainer that mirrors what actually works on the ground: combining technical controls with habit-level changes in how staff evaluate messages.
How to Actually Be Email-Centric
First, treat your domain like a product you ship. When customers or service partners receive messages “from you,” can they verify that those messages really are from you? This is the job of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
Simply put, your company should have a published, enforceable policy that tells the world which mail is authentic and what to do with anything that isn’t.
Second, assume vendors will get phished and plan accordingly. You can’t control their inboxes, but you can reduce how much a compromised supplier account can hurt you. In practice, that means:
- Payment changes never happen by email alone. Build a second factor into the finance workflow, even for “urgent requests from the CEO.”
- Remote maintenance or software update instructions never come from an unverified mailbox. If a “field engineer” emails you a link, you validate through your existing portal or phone channel before doing anything.
Third, keep an eye on your own edge. If a phishing campaign nets valid creds and your VPN trusts those creds too much, you’ve handed them a highway into your network. Enforcing MFA across every externally reachable service and reducing standing access cuts off the most common escalation path.
Where to Start
I suggest starting where people already are: the inbox. Tighten your email authentication posture (SPF/DKIM/DMARC) and formalize a “verify by second channel” rule for payments and maintenance.
From there, push the boundary out a step at a time: add MFA everywhere humanly possible and rehearse a simple incident playbook for invoice fraud and mailbox compromise. All you need are a few decisions that people will actually stick to when the pressure is on.
Uncomfortable Truth
Attackers don’t need to outsmart your entire stack. They just need one believable message during your busiest week. The upside is that you don’t need perfect security to frustrate most attacks. If you force criminals to work a lot harder, most will move on.
And if your operations are increasingly automated with robotics, AS/RS, and conveyors, the ROI on cleaning up email is huge. Every hour not lost to a bogus invoice is capacity you get back.
So treat email like part of the production line and expect that your partners’ inboxes are noisier than you think. The data backs that mindset, and the teams I’ve seen adopt it are the ones that sleep better at night.
