Press Release: The Maritime Transportation System Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MTS-ISAC), formed by an international group of maritime critical infrastructure stakeholders, and The Norwegian Maritime Cyber Resilience Center (NORMA Cyber), a joint effort between Den Norske Krigsforsikring for Skib (DNK) and the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association, have signed a formal agreement to exchange information. While the two organizations previously collaborated informally on threats targeting the maritime sector, their security operations centers will now collaborate more directly on areas regarding cybersecurity threat intelligence, research, and educational activities.
Across the first six months of 2021, reporting to the MTS-ISAC of malicious activity targeting stakeholders increased more than 30 percent. Similar to trends being experienced across multiple critical infrastructure sectors, attacks related to ransomware and credential harvesting are commonplace. “We are pleased to formalize the partnership with NORMA Cyber”, said MTS-ISAC Executive Director, Scott Dickerson. “Our vision and mission objectives are very well aligned, and our communities of stakeholders are both benefitting from our early information exchange activities. This partnership will provide a venue for our organizations to dig deeper into threats targeting the MTS so that we can identify trends, patterns, and mitigate activity through early situational awareness and preventive measures. This is all about helping the maritime community be more resilient to cyber attacks.”
“We are extremely thankful for the dialogue and cooperation with MTS-ISAC so far, and it is great that we now have formalized it. For a newly established initiative like ourselves, it is vital to building partnerships. Both our organizations are built on the belief that within Cyber Security it is crucial to share information and collaborate to help our members and stakeholders to defend against ever-evolving threats. We have already identified threats that have affected both organization’s stakeholders and seen that it is of mutual benefit to share information and experience. We very much look forward to taking this collaboration to the next level,” says Managing Director of NORMA Cyber Lars Benjamin Vold.
The partnership comes at a busy time for both young organizations. NORMA Cyber has just launched a new managed Security Operations Centre (SOC) service for their members and has also started to distribute a new type of report focusing on vulnerabilities within maritime OT systems. Meanwhile, the MTS-ISAC rolled out four Information Exchange communities along with a new threat intelligence platform, Cyware, during the second quarter of 2021. Both organizations, along with their stakeholders, understand that cybersecurity requires collaborative engagements to be successful. They believe active engagement with owners and operators is critical for improving maritime cybersecurity maturity levels.
About/Website/LinkedIn:
The Maritime Transportation System Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MTS-ISAC) promotes and facilitates maritime cybersecurity information sharing, awareness, training, and collaboration efforts between private and public sector stakeholders. The ISAC’s mission is to effectively reduce cyber risk across the MTS ecosystem through improved identification, protection, detection, response, and recovery efforts. More information about the MTS-ISAC is available at https://www.mtsisac.org/
The Norwegian Maritime Cyber Resilience Centre (NORMA Cyber) provides cybersecurity services for Norwegian shipping and maritime sector. The services consist of Intelligence & Information Sharing, Response and Security Operations Centre (SOC). NORMA Cyber is a joint initiative between The Norwegian Shipowners’ Mutual War Risks Insurance Association (DNK) and the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association with a joint member base of more than 420 Shipowners represented with more than 3 400 vessels.
https://www.normacyber.no/en/home
