COSCO makes progress in cyberattack recovery

The Chinese shipping line said all of its vessels are operating as normal.    China’s state-run COSCO Shipping is still working on returning to normal operations after being hit by a cyberattack.
   COSCO’s latest notice issued Thursday said the network failures have affected the United States, Canada, Panama, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Chile and Uruguay.
   “Our main business operation systems are performing stably,” COSCO said. “But email systems in the U.S., Canada, Panama and Peru are temporarily unavailable. Internet phone systems in the U.S., Canada and Panama are temporarily shut down.”
   However, all of COSCO’s vessels are operating as normal.
   In its latest notice, COSCO provided details to help customers with booking, bills of lading, submitting verified gross mass information and cargo tracking, as well as how to get invoices and make payments.
   “After the network security problem in the Americas has been detected, to protect the interests of our customers, we have taken proactive measures to isolate internal networks to carry out technical inspections on a global scale,” the company said in its first notice issued Thursday. “With the reliable confirmation from the technical experts that the networks in all other regions are secure, the network applications were recovered at 16:00 (Beijing Time Wednesday) … in all the regions except the Americas.” As of now, all the business operations have been back to normal in the regions where the network applications have been recovered, the company said.
   COSCO said that all of the service and communication channels it is currently providing are safe and secure, and that it’s safe to make contact with the company via its website, emails, EDI or CargoSmart.
   COSCO did not release any details on the cause of the cyberattack. However, following the major NotPetya cyberattack in June 2017 that hit various organizations, including A.P. Moller-Maersk and FedEx’s TNT Express, maritime expert Lars Jensen said in a Linkedin post last July that 44 percent of carriers showed signs of low levels of cyber security related to very basic elements. One of Jensen’s companies, CyberKeel, focuses on hardening the industry’s defenses against such attacks and preparing contingency plans in the case of an attack.
   “Given the state of affairs in the industry at large, it is crucial that the maritime companies look at the Maersk case and learn from it and create more robust and resilient systems — otherwise, this will not be the last time we see such challenges arise,” he had warned in the post.