A taste of honey: how virtual vessels help reduce cyber risk

Tucked away in server racks strategically placed in most of the world's continents, are some very unusual looking ships. These ‘virtual vessels’ exist only in software code but are key to a better understanding potential hacking and what action to take to prevent future attacks. 

The virtual vessels act as ‘Honeypots’ created with the digital profile of a regular ship, sailing with normal cyber defences on the high seas. The intention is to lure attackers to these decoy targets and monitor their tactics, tracking their attempts to breach cyber defences. 

This intelligence is then fed back to the cyber teams at the SOC and built into Marlink’s tools and solutions that defend real ships against cyber-attacks. 

The honeypot technique is just one way in which Marlink is helping to bolster the maritime industry’s cyber defences and helping it transition from a defensive posture to a proactive one. 

In addition to solution-based protection measures for networks and devices, Marlink provides tools including penetration testing, vulnerability and gap assessments to help companies understand the condition of their cyber defences, where gaps exist and how to fill them. 

Working with full customer permission, we employ hacker techniques to perform audits of cyber defences, probing for weaknesses and providing a report of what vessel operators should be aware of. 

In all our cyber security activity, we follow applicable international protocols, including ISO standards and the NIST framework of ‘Identify, Detect, Protect, Respond, Recover, Govern’. 

Marlink believes that as cyber threats against shipping become more numerous and complex, the need not just to defend against them, but understand and mitigate the risk in advance, will become increasingly important. 

By providing a complete portfolio of managed services to maritime users, Marlink is helping clients to understand security risks in context, what to look out for and how to train their crews to avoid common mistakes. Using this kind of proactive approach is one of many methods Marlink Cyber use to build up unique industry Cyber Threat Intelligence. 

They may never sail a real voyage, call at a port or load cargo, but the intelligence we gain from our fleet of virtual vessels is vital in helping us provide higher quality services that use real world insights to reduce cyber risk.