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Mark DuPont

Critical Flaws Discovered in Shipping Industry Systems


In an article posted on IBM's Security Intelligence web page, Douglas Bonderud reports that Researchers Discover Critical Flaws in Aviation and Shipping Systems. The researchers (Pen Test Partners) reveal an astonishing ability to hack, track, steal and sink ships... if they had the desire.

As the growth of the transportation and shipping grows exponentially on the seas and in the air, this is of great concern. "Given this rapid growth, recent research suggests that both the aerospace and shipping industries may be on a crash course with cybersecurity compromise thanks to their use of outdated (and often unprotected) technology," said Bonderud in his article. He goes on to say that "While ships and planes remain integral to worldwide shipping, cybersecurity uptake hasn’t kept pace with technology adoption. As a result, savvy cybercriminals could hijack both navigation and communication systems to steer ships off course or compromise aircraft operations." And the real critical issue? "...many shipping companies don’t recognize these inherent flaws."

So what do you do?

Protect your maritime assets. And you do that with tools that are proactive, versus reactive. For maritime stakeholders (port authorities, shipping companies, cruise lines, etc.), now is the time to look at a scalable cyber risk management tool that can identify your assets, their key vulnerabilities, and potential exploits, and prioritize them for you using intelligence resources and a dashboard type visual "Risk Score" that can help you manage the threats and integrate with whatever scanners or security measures you have in place.

RiskSense, and NMLEA STAR Product, is getting a lot of national, industry and government attention. You can check out this story in American Security Today. You'll see an interview with the RiskSense CEO Dr. Srinivas Makkamala, and a breakdown of what makes RiskSense so different in this evolving world. This uniqueness includes Intelligence-Driven Risk Analytics, the ability to cover a Growing Attack Surface, incredible Time-to-Value implementation, and a Built to Scale capability that can aid the smallest to the largest organizations. If you would like a briefing or demo to learn more about how RiskSense platform can provide the cyber risk management tools that you need to safety and securely become proactive vs. reactive for as little as $12.50 per device, contact us at Cyber@nmlea.org and we will connect you to the RiskSense team. You'll learn why so many awards have been given to to this product, and why

About the STAR Program The NMLEA has developed a program to help agencies and vendors discern products in a crowded marketplace by utilizing our staff and our members to provide reviews and evaluations of products. Our cadre of professionals have spent more than two decades compiling a body of knowledge and developing solutions for agencies in the areas of equipment evaluation, testing, acquisition, management and sustainment. We've taken that experience to develop an evaluation and assessment protocol and called it the NMLEA STAR PROGRAM: Service Tested — Academy Recognized. Helping teams throughout the Nation at the local, county, state, federal, tribal, military and private sector levels (and internationally through the IMLEA), the STAR Program provides a network of operators, peers and subject matter experts to help in the evaluation and assessment processes.

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