The Friday Report: August 23rd, 2019
Quick wrap up of a few hot topic newsworthy stories in the supply chain logistics industryChina Announces Retaliatory Tariffs on U.S. Goods
Today, China revealed plans for imposing tariffs against $75 billion in U.S. goods, further escalating the trade war. According to China’s Commerce Ministry, an official explained that an additional 5% or 10% in tariffs would be levied against 5,078 products that originate in the United States. The products include agricultural products small aircraft, cars and crude oil. Imposition of tariffs would occur on some products on September 1st, while others would be levied starting December 15th. These dates are the same dates chosen by President Trump for the latest round of tariffs to be imposed on Chinese exports.
In early August, President Trump announced his decision to place 10% tariffs on $300 billion in Chinese imports as of September 1st. He later decided to extend the date that tariffs would start on some products to December 15th.
Imposing tariffs on American goods exported to China may make these products more expensive for Chinese customers to purchase, potentially hurting sales for American companies.
5 Sustainable Cost-Saving Strategies for Your Warehouse
Looking for ways to cut costs in your warehouse and have a positive impact on the environment? Look no further. Here are a few changes you can make to help both the planet and your bottom line:
Phase in Energy Efficient Equipment
If your warehouse will be making some investments in new equipment, consider energy efficient alternatives. By buying the highest quality equipment you can afford at the time, you will be buying those that use the most efficient technology, saving you time, energy and money.
Switch to LED bulbs
Did you know that LED and compact fluorescent bulbs provide the same quality of lighting at a fifth of the energy requirement? Enough said.
Green Your Packaging
Are you throwing away a lot of packaging? If your warehouse has a lot of packaging waste, it may be an ideal time to evaluate the types of materials in the packaging. According to Green Business Bureau, sustainable packaging materials can be easily found, including biodegradable packaging peanuts, recycled cardboard and paper and more. Evaluating how items are packaged may also reveal some ways that packaging can be reduced or done differently, resulting in savings.
Supply Chain Cyberattacks Against Open Source Software Spreads
Over the past year, a flood of supply chain cyberattacks hitting open source software has expanded. This week, it was discovered that two separate backdoors had been slipped into a dozen libraries downloaded by server administrators hundreds of thousands of times.
The first backdoor to be discovered was in Webmin. Webmin is a web-based administration tool and has over a million installations. The server was compromised sometime around April 2018 using a subtle change to a script. This permitted the attacker to access Webmin and distribute a backdoor that was downloaded over 900,000 times. This may have been actively used by tens of thousands of Internet-facing servers.
The second backdoor, in the RubyGems repository was discovered on Monday in 11 libraries. This backdoor permitted attackers to have use of pre-selected credentials, enabling them to remotely execute commands of their choice on infected servers. Additional capabilities of the malware were found as well. Malicious code including a miner for cryptocurrencies was also used. The backdoored libraries had been downloaded nearly 3,600 times.
Last October saw a rash of cyberattacks with two unrelated supply side attacks in a single week against open source projects.
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