Cybersecurity is Top Daily Challenge for Logistics Industry

As transportation and logistics enterprises rely heavily on digital infrastructure to support distributed IT environments and with supply chains becoming more connected, cloud-enabled, and AI-enabled, network complexity and cybersecurity risk have increased. 

A new survey The State of Network Security in Transportation & Logistics from Aryaka, found that transportation and logistics organizations indicated that their top networking and network security priority over the next 12 months is simplifying and lowering network costs (70%), followed by enhancing network performance and security visibility (57%) and reducing workload on IT teams (51%). 

Other key findings include:

• Cybersecurity is Top Daily Challenge: Organizations said that staying ahead of cybersecurity threats (81%) is the biggest day-to-day networking challenge, followed by cost-effective modernization (62%) and understaffed IT teams (60%).
• Ransomware Vexes the Industry: Ransomware and malware threats (77%) are the top network security concern in the industry, with policy enforcement (66%) and remote access control (64%) close behind.
• Organizations Aren’t Ready for GenAI Challenges: Only 28% of respondents have started implementing solutions to mitigate GenAI network and security challenges, while 56% are either still evaluating GenAI risks or are unprepared.
• Hybrid IT Infrastructure Dominates: Three-quarters of respondents (74%) rely on a hybrid mix of private data centers and cloud environments, making flexibility and connectivity across environments critical.
• Legacy Apps Moving to the Cloud: Most respondents are actively migrating or planning to migrate legacy apps to the cloud, introducing transitional complexity.

The report’s findings complement and contrast with the insights from Aryaka’s recent State of Network Security in Manufacturing (2024) report. According to the data from each report, both industries prioritize cost control, visibility, and network modernization, while limited IT resources make modernization difficult. However, transportation respondents place more emphasis on mobility and remote access control. In addition, transportation and logistics organizations demonstrated a slightly lower readiness for GenAI adoption.

“To gain agility and accommodate rapidly evolving supply chains, transportation and logistics enterprises are relying more on hybrid IT, highly distributed cloud deployments, and GenAI. But these technologies are introducing new network performance, security, and visibility challenges that the sector hasn’t been equipped to effectively manage with legacy infrastructure,” said Ken Rutsky, chief marketing officer at Aryaka, in a statement. “