Inter-organizational Processes: Requirements for Securing Data

Supply chains, built by the flow of goods and money between firms, are changing their nature into value networks, built on strategic and knowledge-based relationships. This phenomenon characterizes mainly complex product industries, i.e. aerospace, requiring long research and development projects. Strategic relationships are implemented by processes crossing organizational boundaries. To carry them out, data exchange is required, but this introduces risks, too. These risks can be faced by defining more accurate privacy management techniques and functionalities of inter-organizational platforms. In this paper some inter-organizational processes characterizing the aero-engine supply chains are discussed focusing on their security and privacy issues. They were explored thanks to the Italian aerospace company Avio. One of them, the supply chain planning process, involving high classified data exchange among all the firms in the value network, will be faced by the SecureSCM research project through cryptography and secure multiparty computation technology.