A forensic control

A responsive control

A preventive control

A detection control

3D printing; the benefit is on-demand local production of the bracket from a digital design, which removes the eight-week import lead time and the need to carry safety stock of every low-turnover part

Blockchain; the benefit is an immutable, shared record of each part’s provenance, warranty status and failure history, which would improve traceability and support claims against the supplier

Big data analytics for predictive maintenance; the benefit is that impending failures could be forecast from historical and sensor data and the part ordered in advance, although the eight-week lead time and the cost of holding the part would both remain

Drones for expedited delivery of the part; the benefit is a faster final leg once the bracket has been manufactured, although the binding constraint is the overseas production and shipping time rather than local transport

Internet-based pay-per-use computing resources (servers, storage, applications).

A private network with no internet connection

A weather-forecasting technique

Phishing using a look-alike domain that substitutes the digit one for the letter i; the control is independent verification of any banking-detail change by telephoning a previously known number, with segregation between amending the masterfile and authorising payment

Business e-mail compromise following the takeover of the supplier’s genuine mailbox; the control is to require every supplier to digitally sign its e-mail so that authenticity can be verified cryptographically before any change is actioned

A man-in-the-middle attack intercepting and altering the supplier’s e-mail in transit; the control is to enforce TLS on the mail gateway and require remote staff to connect through a VPN

An insider threat, since only someone with masterfile access could redirect a payment of this size; the control is enhanced background screening of finance staff together with compulsory job rotation and leave

A conversational AI chatbot supported by an online self-service portal; the enquiries are high volume, repetitive and rule-based, so automating the answers deflects most visits entirely and frees counter staff for the exceptions that genuinely require judgement

Robotic Process Automation; software bots would automate the rule-based capture of application data between the bureau’s systems, which would shorten back-office processing, but RPA interacts with applications rather than with members of the public, so the repetitive walk-in enquiries would continue

Big data analytics; historical queue data could be analysed to forecast peak periods and roster staff accordingly, which would ease congestion at busy times, but it manages the symptom rather than removing the repetitive enquiries that create the queue

A 5G network upgrade at the service counters; higher bandwidth and lower latency would marginally speed up each system transaction, but the bottleneck is the volume of repetitive human enquiries rather than the speed of the network