"This has been a really strong evolution going from the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s, to take fat out of the supply chain, to tighten down everything," says supply-chain management expert Rich Weissman. He says in the past 10 years companies have come to "really rely on analytics to fine-tune supply chains to make sure that supply and demand absolutely line up". "And that's where I think we've gone too far.”

The heavy dependence on China across industry verticals is an obvious example of the sole-sourced nature of today’s supply chains.

"They're becoming more capable of conducting these attacks successfully," Goody says about the hackers. "As these criminal organizations grow, they're growing like a regular business would. They're building out different teams who can conduct these intrusion operations at a greater scale, or with greater efficiency, or without being detected. That's going to continue to grow as well."