Katerina Tasiopoulou, founder and CEO of ThreatScene, spoke at the 9th Shipping Conference of “Naftemporiki”, about the risks, especially technological ones, in shipping.
Referring to the risks that shipping has to face, Tasiopoulou emphasized that “security is a hot topic. Shipping has been hit very hard lately and we all say this word ‘risks’. What is the risk of an attack? Not why it is at risk but how shipping is at risk”.
As she said, “the risks are no different from the risks faced by other sectors. The attacks are exactly the same. The techniques are the same. The systems are different, of course.”
“The groups that attack us are the same. They are from the same countries, they have the same patterns and what you hear now in the news whether it is in Greece, whether it is in England, or whether it is abroad, all these attacks are general, they are not targeted. If we talk about targeted attacks, the discussion and the risks change completely. But in general attacks are completely random at the moment. And as a sector we receive attacks differently and that is why we are at risk differently and I will examine how this affects us,” she noted.
Technological risks
“The biggest problem is operations. And right now I think a shipping company is under attack. What the shipowners don’t understand is that the attack is not an IT issue. The whole company goes down. And the whole company can go down for weeks. That’s where shipping is at risk,” Tasiopoulou pointed out.
“And what does digitalization do?”, she wondered, noting that “everyone here talks about digitalization. What does that do? From an attack perspective, it makes the attack much easier, much more specialized. From a security perspective, does it help us at all? Not that much.”
“Digitalization creates connectivity, which means that protecting yourself if your partner is hit is an issue. And we are all responsible and it is a domino effect. These are the risks,” emphasized Tasiopoulou.
