The explosive growth in communications services over the last two decades has dramatically changed the way that businesses operate in all sectors, improving efficiency and providing new opportunities. In the maritime sector, we can see this from the original adoption of VHF a hundred years ago for ship communication through to more recent safety technologies such as AIS and satellite communication. However, the limited bandwidth and high cost of these technologies has historically limited the sector’s ability to leverage them in many of the ways seen in other industries.
Notably, when adding new technologies or capabilities to existing systems, it’s important to consider any additional risk that may be presented; this can be both from vulnerabilities in the underlying technologies themselves, or from the way in which they can interact with or expose other capabilities. Where risks are identified, mitigations should be put in place to reduce them to an acceptable level. Below we explore some of the ways in which this can be done, and some examples of widely used maritime technologies.