Maritime industry setting sights on cybersecurity tools

IN the past few weeks, there seems to have been a continuing trickle of horror stories about large companies, including airlines, having their systems hacked and data stolen. I am sure none of us would want to be in the situation the directors of Cathay Pacific now find themselves, having to explain how a data breach exposed personal information of up to 9.4 million passengers.

Loss of data is of course hugely worrying but with the aviation industry, the idea that criminals could access sensitive operational systems would be much worse. It is to be hoped that hasn't happened yet but any breaches of cybersecurity in the aviation sector must be taken extremely seriously. And of course the same must go for us in the shipping business, especially as we are rather quickly moving into the era of at least semi-autonomous ships.

To be fair, there is a lot of activity going on within our industry to improve cybersecurity. This is evidenced by the number of press releases I receive on the subject.