BreakPoint Labs (BPL) was engaged by a major research university to conduct a comprehensive supply chain and partner security assessment, evaluating the risks and potential attack paths between the university’s IT environment and a local partner institution. Both organizations had established a trusted working relationship over many years, sharing IT resources, accounts, applications, and network access across their interconnected environments.
That trust, while operationally rational, had quietly reduced the security controls enforced between the two entities. When BPL’s assessment team simulated the attack paths an adversary could take by exploiting that trusted boundary, the findings were significant. A compromise on one side created a near-direct path into the other.
This case study documents the challenge, methodology, findings, and outcomes of that assessment.
