The recently launched edition of the Bridge Procedures Guide from the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) reflects the rapid technological advances taking place in the shipping industry. It is aimed at providing crews with the knowledge and confidence they need to deal with the digital transformation taking place within the world fleet.

“I’ve seen navigation equipment that I sailed with on display in Hamburg’s maritime museum. Now you walk onto the bridge and it’s like Star Wars,” says Nick Rich, Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement’s Group Technical Manager – Systems and a member of the expert panel that helped ICS develop the new edition.

However this high level of dependency on electronic systems comes with increased vulnerability to criminal attacks.

According to transnational anti-crime agency Europol, accelerated digitalisation related to the Covid-19 pandemic has boosted the development of a number of cyber threats. The new edition of Europol’s Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment notes that criminals have been “quick to abuse the current circumstances to increase profits, spreading their tentacles to various areas and exposing vulnerabilities, connected to systems, hospitals or individuals”.

There is almost no information available on to what extent the global shipping industry may have been hit by ransomware attacks or other cyber crime. What is clear, though, is that shipping is becoming more and more dependent on information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT). And the bunker industry operates some very expensive technology-dependent assets.

A recent, and fairly typical, press release talked of a “user-friendly solution that automates and integrates control, alarm and monitoring of critical systems on board”. As we move more into LNG bunkering the idea of malware wandering around in critical systems hardly bears thinking about.