Cydome is the independent provider of the highest level of cybersecurity at sea, bringing a ship-wide protection approach, with the goal of protecting the wider supply chain. Cydome provides ship owners and operators with an advanced cybersecurity coverage for protecting IT and operational assets while assuring their readiness for any regulatory inspections.
Our solution has been used around the globe for over 18 months onboard clients’ fleets, delivering key insights and protection for vessels, and also providing recommendations on how they can enhance their cybersecurity.
How did you come up with the idea for the company?
The idea for Cydome was researched and developed by the founders of the company: maritime and cybersecurity professionals (ex-naval officers, Big Data and Cybersecurity experts), who have joined forces to address the unique challenges of cybersecurity at sea. We saw this as an opportunity to create a highly-specialised business, specifically for the maritime industry. The challenges this industry faces are unique and precarious. The global shipping industry is the backbone and the foundation of the world’s supply chain and historically has a number of security weaknesses.
We founded this company with the ethos of creating full-spectrum protection for vessels, fleets and onshore vulnerabilities while making sure the team on board and on shore in charge of monitoring the cybersecurity status know exactly what to do.
How has the company evolved during the pandemic?
With Covid-19 increasing digitalisation within the sector, the maritime industry has significant cybersecurity exposures. Data theft, hijacks and ransomware attacks have increased dramatically since the beginning of the pandemic with businesses reeling from the effects of cyber-attacks resulting from weak cyber-defence. The global economy (not just maritime) has seen a growth of more than 480% in ransomware attacks during the pandemic period.
During the pandemic, we had to adapt the way our solution was deployed on vessels, due to the numerous restrictions and lockdowns. Rather than sending a Cydome team to ports and vessels, we had to make sure our solution could be easily installed by our clients.
We had to reconfigure our hardware and software deployment process and enable a plug-and-play installation. As of today, all our solutions are delivered to the clients in this way, for them to install quickly and efficiently. This can be done by anyone on a ship, as it does not require IT expertise. After a few hours the system is operational and delivered without any complications.
What can we hope to see from Cydome in the future?
We expect to continue our expansion into the maritime supply chain to not only provide cybersecurity protection for vessels, but also to protect ports and offshore facilities across the globe. At Cydome we understand that to protect the maritime industry from cyber threats requires the protection of the whole supply chain– a weakness in any part of the infrastructure that makes up the supply chain will have a knock-on effect. For example, the protection of a vessel entering a port cannot be complete without making sure it won’t affect the port and vice-versa. With the reliance on the maritime cybersecurity supply chain growing, and more large retail companies entering the arena, we need to ensure that we can provide an agnostic and adaptable cybersecurity solution which can work with all vendor solutions.
