Cyberattacks Present Shipping Industry’s Biggest Threat Since WWII

The shipping sector is reportedly facing a spike in cyberattacks tied to state-sponsored hackers.

The industry saw at least 64 cyber incidents last year, the Financial Times reported Saturday (July 27), citing research by the Netherlands’ NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences. That study found that there were three such incidents in 2013 and zero in 2003.

More than 80% of the incidents logged since 2001 that involved a known attacker originated in Russia, China, North Korea or Iran, the study showed.

“The international rules-based order … the great system [that benefited shipping] since the second world war is under threat like never before,” Guy Platten, secretary-general at the International Chamber of Shipping, which represents shipowners controlling about 80% of the world’s commercial fleets, told the FT.

The report also noted that shipping experts are warning that the industry — which has since its infancy dealt with the physical threat of pirates — is not prepared for the online variety.

“IT spend in the maritime sector is pretty low,” said Stephen McCombie, a maritime IT security professor at NHL Stenden. 

Shipowners, McCombie added, “are looking for people with maritime knowledge and cybersecurity knowledge,” though that is not a large group.

The report comes as industries around the world are facing an uptick in cybersecurity incidents, with PYMNTS noting at the start of this month that 2024 was proving to be the “year of the cyberattack” (even before a number of high-profile incidents had even happened).

Research from the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Fraud Management in Online Transactions” shows that most eCommerce merchants had dealt with cyberattacks or data breaches in the past year. Eighty-two percent of these businesses experienced an attack in that time, and 47% said the breaches caused them to lose revenue and customers.

“It is essentially an adversarial game; criminals are out to make money, and the financial community needs to curtail that activity. What’s different now is that both sides are armed with some really impressive technology,” Michael Shearer, chief solutions officer at Hawk AI, said in an interview with PYMNTS. 

“On the automation side, it’s all about data. It’s all about organizing and connecting your data together, understanding the signals that you have so you can build a richer context and make better decisions. But you’ve got to have that information there, and you’ve got to connect it together. That’s step one.”