Pirates infiltrate a shipping company’s systems to identify ships with valuable cargoes and minimal onboard security. The vessel is hijacked and only the containers with valuable cargoes are taken. Pirates hand-pick their shipping targets online by tracking the navigation of a vessel through an Automatic Identification System (AIS). Smugglers hack into networked systems to locate containers with drug contraband and cleanly confiscate the drugs without detection. They attempt to delete the data for the entire shipment to avoid a trail. Hackers infiltrate an energy company’s systems and tilt an oil rig, shutting it down. They also penetrate the networked computing systems on another rig with malware. Trained personnel take almost three weeks to clear the system.
With the emergence of big data and increasingly interconnected technologies, a revolution of efficiency and speed is overtaking the shipping and logistics industry. As always, with improvement comes considerable risk, one of the most worrisome of which is the growing threat of cyber-attack…
