Cyber Security at Marlink
Maritime comms and IT company Marlink has a new dedicated cybersecurity company with 150 experts. Maritime president Tore Morten Olsen explained
Maritime comms and IT company Marlink launched a dedicated maritime cybersecurity division “Marlink Cyber” in April this year. It has 150 cybersecurity experts in its staff.
Marlink Cyber provides managed cybersecurity solutions, detection and response services, vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, phishing and awareness programs, compliance and gap assessments and risk management.
Also, in April 2025 Marlink launched an “External Attack Surface Management” solution to identify and anticipate digital security threats.
It will identify weaknesses in your external facing digital infrastructure, by mapping exposed digital assets (digital assets connected to the internet but without security controls); unpatched systems and configuration issues.
The service includes scans of the dark web to see if any of your data has been stolen and placed there. You can also access insights from global threat information feeds.
Customers can start scanning their assets as soon as they sign up.
Marlink also operates several Security Operations Centres (SOCs) around the world. They help customers understand where they are with cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity acquisitions
The launch of Marlink Cyber follows Marlink’s acquisitions of cybersecurity companies Diverto (July 2024) and Port IT (October 2024).
Diverto provided IT and OT security solutions for enterprise and critical infrastructure. It is based in Zagreb, Croatia. Diverto operated a Security Operations Centre (SOC), including providing incident management and forensics, and covering both IT and OT.
Port-IT supported 7,000 vessels, with its Security Operations Centres (SOCs) in Rhoon, Netherlands, where the company is based, and in Bangkok.
Critical mass of talent
Tore Morten Olsen, president of maritime with Marlink, says that having 150 cybersecurity experts in its staff gives the company a “critical mass.”
It means Marlink is an attractive workplace for cybersecurity experts. “You need to have a certain scale to be relevant in that domain,” he says.
“We are able to create a unique offering, taking the talent and the competence that these people bring, combining that with the expertise that we have on the market.”
Market expertise is a key differentiator.
We find a lot of cybersecurity companies are very generic in their approach with little understanding of the operating environment, of the maritime community.
For Marlink, “it’s a continuous evolution in the portfolio, both in terms of technology to protect the assets of our clients and the IT infrastructure, and in terms of training and education to the people on board.”
Cybersecurity training
It has taken time to get many seafarers accustomed to taking cybersecurity seriously. For many seafarers, this seems a bit peripheral to the world they used to operate in. But when you put the vessel on the internet, the importance of awareness and cybersecurity training for people becomes obvious. Gen-Z seafarers basically have that [digital first] mentality from the beginning.
Marlink provides online training classes through its “Marlink Training Academy.
The service
Marlink offers consulting services to help customers assess their cybersecurity protection and compliance.
When shipowners seek to review cybersecurity on individual vessels, Marlink staff assess the vessel and advise the owner what to do, including which services it needs to buy.
It takes care to stress they do not necessarily need to buy these services from Marlink.
We take an advisory role in the beginning. It is up to the client to choose whether to plug those gaps with our services or by other vendors. Typically, bigger shipping companies are more proactive with cybersecurity.
Marlink has developed a platform called Xchange for managing onboard IT and cybersecurity. It includes all the cybersecurity infrastructure, and is fully integrated with Marlink’s network.
Marlink has developed what it calls a “honeypot service,” a way of simulating a ship on the internet, to see how it gets attacked by hackers.
By doing that, we also learn a lot about [hackers’] evolution, how they are trying to infiltrate the ships. We can then build a more resilient solution on the other side. It is an interesting learning method for us.
Evolving regulations
On the compliance side, shipowners want their cybersecurity providers to generate documents stating that the vessel is compliant which can be provided to class.
There are still many discussions going on in the industry about how the IACS “UR” cybersecurity regulations should be applied. For example, there are discussions about how many firewalls are needed on a network. Some yards and class societies argue that two are better than one. It’s being followed differently by different people.
There are also discussions about whether shipowners should be prepared for the same regulations to apply to their existing fleet, which would be a more complex retrofit topic.
This article was published in the August - September edition of People Tech Maritime.
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