Maritime Cybersecurity: Predictable = Hackable
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Maritime Cybersecurity: Predictable = Hackable
Autonomous shipping is supposed to make the ocean safer by removing human error.
Instead, predictability is turning vessels into steerable systems, vulnerable by design.
Remote. Unmanned. Predictable.
As autonomy increases, maritime cyber risk stops being abstract.
Cyber attacks on critical infrastructure no longer target data alone, they influence movement, timing, and physical outcomes at sea.
Patching individual systems won’t solve this.
The deeper issue remains: predictable behavior, implicit trust, and blurred responsibility create ideal conditions for exploitation.
Host, Lieuwe Jan Koning (Co-Founder & CTO, ON2IT), talks with Stephen McCombie (Professor of Maritime IT Security, NHL Stenden) and Hans Quivooij (CISO, Damen Shipyards), about the hidden risks of autonomous shipping, and why predictability changes the rules of maritime cybersecurity.
This episode isn’t about stopping autonomy.
It’s about understanding what happens when control, responsibility, and regulation fail to keep up.
What you’ll learn
- Why maritime cybersecurity now affects physical safety
Autonomous decisions directly shape real-world outcomes. - How predictability creates exploitable maritime cyber risk
Safety logic becomes leverage when behavior is guaranteed. - Where responsibility breaks down in autonomous shipping
Why existing legal and operational models no longer hold. - What cyber attacks on critical infrastructure look like at sea
From spoofed inputs to disrupted routes and blocked waterways. - How to think differently about securing autonomous maritime systems
Threat modeling, scenario testing, and designing for failure, not perfection.
Your cybersecurity experts
Lieuwe Jan Koning
Co-Founder and CTO
ON2IT
Professor Stephen McCombie
Professor of Maritime IT Security
NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences
Hans Quivooij
CISO
Damen Shipyards
Episode details
It starts with a simple scenario.
You’re Port Control.
A vessel requests entry.
No captain. No crew. Just autonomy.
The issue isn’t autonomy.
It’s that control is no longer clear.
Autonomous vessels rely on predictable behavior to stay safe.
That predictability can also be used against them.
By shaping inputs, a vessel can be slowed, diverted, or stopped, without physical access.
When something goes wrong, there’s no one on the bridge to intervene.
And responsibility becomes unclear.
Maritime law assumes a captain.
Autonomy removes that anchor, while regulation lags behind.
This is why cyber attacks on critical infrastructure at sea have real consequences: disrupted ports, broken supply chains, physical impact.
Autonomous shipping doesn’t fail because of one bug.
It fails when predictable design meets adversarial reality.
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