Amanda Luton

In July, what is being called the “largest IT outage in history” grounded air cargo and travel and caused “substantial disruptions” to the networks of such supply chain giants as FedEx and UPS. While cybersecurity company CrowdStrike blamed the worldwide outage on a “software update” and not a cyberattack, the event illustrates the importance of taking measures to safeguard the supply chain systems we all rely on for the movement of goods and people. Cybersecurity is Paramount in Digital Supply Chain A Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report published in October 2023 said that “bad actors are using more sophisticated tools and techniques to exploit vulnerabilities in digital networks, and weak points can be difficult to detect. Companies with established cybersecurity capabilities are being compromised through less sophisticated third parties that are connected to their network.” Today’s Supply Chain Remains Vulnerable to Cyberattacks According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, the number of organizations targeted by supply chain cyberattacks skyrocketed by 2,600% between 2018 and 2023. Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report said there was a 68% year-over-year leap in the amount of “supply chain interconnection” involved in cyber breaches. Among high-profile cyberattacks affecting the supply chain: In December 2020, Forward…

At MODEX 2026 in Atlanta, Scott Luton sat down with Andre Luecht, Global Strategy Lead for Transportation, Logistics & Warehousing at Zebra Technologies, to explore how synchronization, visibility, and practical innovation are shaping the next phase of supply chain performance. Interestingly, the conversation began not with technology, but with competitive dragon boat racing, a hobby of Andre Luecht’s that he enjoys in his free time. For Luecht, the analogy is clear: success depends on alignment. “The team that is the most synchronized team is the one that wins,” he explains, a principle that applies just as much to supply chains as it does to sport.   Turning Data Into Decisions At the Edge Zebra Technologies has long been known for enabling visibility across supply chains, from barcode scanning to RFID and beyond. But today, the focus is evolving toward something more powerful: decision-making at the edge. Luecht describes a world where frontline workers are empowered with real-time intelligence directly on their devices. “AI… is what you can build into a device in the hand of someone who has to decide what truck a certain pallet goes onto,” he says. This concept, what Zebra calls “frontline AI”, brings intelligence closer to…