Did you know that ships also suffer for the very same kinds of ransomware removal issues as we see in ICT systems? A recent document called ‘Guidelines on Cyber Security onboard Ships’ revealed some very interesting data regarding this.
This document consists of so many examples of cyber security incidents which have occurred on ports and even on ships. What is more surprising is that none of these incidents had surfaced before the report revealed these.
An example of such an incident was when a newly-built dry bulk ship had been delayed from carrying out its activities because the onboard ECDIS had been infected. This virus was initially thought to be a glitch in the system but when a producer technician was called in, the problem was quickly recognized.
Even though the technician new that ransomware removal was necessary in this situation, they couldn’t find the source of the problem. Well, the good news was that the virus had been quarantined and the computers of ECDIS were restored. The bad news, however, was that the costs of repairs and the delay in sailing had cost the unknown company hundreds of thousands of dollars!
Another wakeup call for ransomware removal had been received by a large company in the shipping industry quite recently – Maersk. This is the biggest among cargo shipping companies and had been infected by ransomware called NotPetya.
This incident had cost the massive company something over $300 million in cumulative costs and recoveries. Why though? This was because the IT staff in this company had to go forward with reinstalling as many as 4000 servers over a wide network of 45,000 PCs. Once this had been done, they were able to safely resume their normal course of operations.
Supposedly any company or individual who is connected to the internet isn’t safe – no matter what industry they are in.
