Online reporting platform will combat maritime crime

AUGUST 29, 2017 — The CSO Alliance, a global, members-only community of shipping industry Company Security Officers (CSOs) is joining forces with Airbus Defence and Space to leverage its aviation and group cyber expertise to build a secure online reporting platform to help counter maritime crime on a global scale.

The platform will be ready for launch in early October and will provide marine industry CSOs and Company Information Security Officers (CISOs) with a worldwide, voluntary and anonymous incident reporting portal for assessing physical, as well as cyber, threat activities and the respective risk levels as the basis for appropriate decision-making and action-taking.

The digital revolution has significantly modified the maritime market’s way of working. While huge efficiencies and cost savings have been gained, new threats have emerged and are dramatically growing.

This has created a need for a centralized reporting system that offers the option of anonymous reporting of criminal activities including cyber-attacks on land and at sea. With this reporting platform not only can incident data be collected, but risks can be assessed, trends analysed and alerts made available to the community in a timely manner.

“The evolving physical threats and cyber-attacks that the maritime industry faces are still vastly under-reported,” said Olivier Surly, Head of Maritime Solutions at Airbus Defence and Space. “Building upon our strong and established experience in Maritime Domain Awareness, we are supporting CSO Alliance to develop an effective and collective tool which will empower shipowners and operators, ports, insurers, flag states and classification societies to improve overall safety and security.

Mark Sutcliffe, Managing Director of CSO Alliance, said: “The ecosystem and collaborations our joint initiative with Airbus and digital partner Wididi fosters will save CSOs and CISOs time. By ensuring that not only captains and crews, but the wider maritime supply chain are fully briefed on the cyber threats we all face too, risk is more accurately assessed and we achieve security through community.”

CSO Alliance is actively supported by leaders in industry, BIMCO, North P&I, the Marshall Islands Registry and DNV GL.