Cyber risk has been identified as one of the most serious threats to the shipping industry going forward – and it’s a question of ‘when’ not ‘if’, industry experts warned during a recent webinar on the future of shipping. “The Maersk situation was a high-profile wake up call,” said Richard Meade, managing editor of Lloyd’s List. “It seems people woke up, hit the snooze button and went to sleep again. They don’t appear to quite grasp the evolving nature of how it is developing. There are hundreds of attacks happening that people aren’t talking about.” Mark O’Neill, CEO of Columbia Ship Management agreed. “The determined hacker will get into your systems. It’s how you deal with it as a business and how you survive and how resilient your business is that is key. “You can buy the most expensive systems in the world and you will always be vulnerable to the determined hacker. The larger the company and the greater the consolidation the greater the risk and exposure to hacking. The more legacy IT systems you have the more entry points there are for the determined hacker."
