The world economy is heavily dependent on maritime transport, as most of the international trade is carried out by sea. Delay in shipping can result in severe financial loss, especially for the management team in the distribution channel. This heavy dependency makes the shipping industry an attractive target for cyber criminals.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digitization of the world, which was already taking place, due to guidelines that made it mandatory for people to work from home via the internet. Therefore, the maritime industry was more dependent than ever on the Internet. You may not think of ships and fleets closely related to technology, but ships are constantly connected to the internet.
Here lies the real problem: some of the systems and computers on these ships often use incredibly complicated and old systems. This makes it much more difficult to protect them from cyberattacks. The systems these ships use are so complicatedly intertwined that there are many blind spots that are virtually undetectable.
Since ships are increasingly dependent on digitization, integration and automation systems today, cyber risk management onboard has top priority. As…
