Logistics infrastructure — port terminal operating systems, carrier booking platforms, customs filing systems — has become an increasingly visible target for cyberattacks in recent years, including several publicized incidents affecting major shipping lines and port operators that caused real operational disruption, from booking system outages to, in some cases, physical terminal operations being affected.
The risk profile differs from a typical corporate data breach: a successful attack on a carrier's booking or scheduling system, or a major port's terminal operating system, can disrupt cargo movement for every shipper using that carrier or port, not just the attack's direct target — which means a shipper's exposure to this risk is not fully within their own control, since it depends on the security posture of carriers and ports they rely on.
For most importers, the practical response is less about direct technical defense (which sits with the carriers and ports themselves) and more about resilience planning — the same multimodal and multi-gateway flexibility discussed elsewhere in this series also reduces exposure to a cyber incident disrupting one specific carrier or port, for the same reason it reduces exposure to a labor action or weather event affecting a single point of failure.
We monitor for major disruption to the carriers and ports we route through, cyber-related or otherwise, and our standing practice of maintaining alternatives across multiple carriers and gateways is relevant risk mitigation here too, even though it was not originally built with cybersecurity specifically in mind.