Cyber 08 Apr, 2021 Under Attack - Waypoints Feature Article Cyber exposures and the consequent losses can affect anyone in the maritime community at any time, write Astaara CEO Robert Dorey and West's Christopher South  Download PDF No one is likely to forget 2020 in a hurry. The pandemic had a seismic effect on all our lives and livelihoods, exerted a significant impact on trading and, out of urgent necessity, transformed working practices the world over. The availability of high-speed, high-quality connectivity has been an invaluable asset, enabling organisations to maintain their business continuity. The corresponding downside has been an alarming escalation in the incidence of cybercrime, and some very high-profile shipping companies have recently borne the brunt of these attacks. Already suffering from the disruption caused by lockdown measures and market volatility, an additional setback was extremely unwelcome and costly for these companies. The regrettable fact is that the same critical pressure which forced organisations everywhere to rapidly move so many aspects of their operations online conversely represented a golden opportunity for hackers. All four of the most prominent container operating firms fell victim to malware or ransomware attacks within months of each other, in effect compromising almost 60% of the world’s container traffic. Vulnerabilities These exceptional circumstances only exacerbated a problem which was already growing long before the pandemic took hold – namely, that the maritime industry has been conspicuously slow to fully acknowledge the vulnerabilities that accompany the digital revolution. Companies which view the cyber realm as too complex and nebulous to engage with can often fail to grasp the financial, operational and reputational damage a cyber event can wreak until their own businesses have already been impacted. Underestimating their own susceptibility, usually through a lack of understanding at management level, is a