Maritime Cybersecurity: Meeting Threats to Globalization’s Great Conveyor

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of cybersecurity in the global maritime system. The maritime system is a set of interconnected infrastructures that facilitates trade across major bodies of water. Covered here are the problem of protecting maritime traffic from attack as well as how cyberattacks change the equation for securing commercial shipping from attack on the high seas. The authors ask what cyberattack aimed at maritime targets – ships, ports, and other elements –looks like and what protections have been emplaced to counter the threat of cyberattack upon the maritime system.