Container Shipping Gets A Cyber Security Mandate

The Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA) has published its cyber security guidance to prepare ship-owners and vessels for the International Maritime Organisation’s(IMO) pending cyber security mandate.

The DCSA is a  non-profit founded by major ocean carriers to standardise the container shipping industry. Its members include container giants such as MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, ONE, Evergreen, Yang Ming, HMM and ZIM. Maersk was a notable casualty of the NotPetya malware attacks of 2017
 
IMO’s Resolution MSC.428(98) on Maritime Cyber Risk Management in Safety Management Systems was adopted in 2017 to ensure that vessels’ cyber risks are appropriately addressed in existing safety management systems.

The guidelines provide high-level recommendations related to maritime cyber risk management in order to protect vessel’s against current and emerging cyber threats and vulnerabilities. The deadline for its implementation is set for January 2021.

The DCSA cyber security guide aligns with existing Standards and Technology cyber risk management frameworks, enabling ship-owners to effectively incorporate cyber risk management into their existing Safety Management Systems (SMS).

Ship-owner association BIMCO and the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed cyber risk management frameworks that enable ship-owners to “effectively incorporate cyber risk management into their existing safety management systems” and the DCSA advice today helps the container shipping sector align with those frameworks.

“As shipping catches up with other industries such as banking and telco in terms of digitisation, the need for cyber risk management becomes an imperative,” said Thomas Bagge, CEO, DCSA.

Specifically, the DCSA guide will provide ship-owners with tools to help designated technical crew members mitigate the risk of a cyber-attack, or contain damage and recover in the event of an attack.

“Due to the global economic dependence on shipping and the complex inter-connectedness of shipping logistics, cyber-attacks such as malware, denial of service, and system hacks can not only disrupt one carrier’s revenue stream, they can have a significant impact on the global economy,” said Bagge.

“The DCSA implementation guidance provides a thorough and refreshing deep dive into the challenge of how to implement cyber risk management in a ship-owner company.... Initially thought of as a tool for container carriers, the guidance can also inspire the thinking in other shipping sectors as well as the ongoing update of the major shipping associations’ benchmark document ‘Guidelines on Cyber Risk Management Onboard Ships’,”said Jakob Larsen, Head of Maritime Safety & Security for BIMCO.

The DCSA cyber security guide, DCSA Implementation Guide for Cyber Security on Vessels, can be freely downloaded from the DCSA website.

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