Protecting Future Maritime Communication

Our oceans are filled with ships that take care of the most important
distribution of goods in the world economy. Evolving from isolated
chunks of hollow metal containers, ships are becoming more and
more like interconnected floating computers, and thus increasingly
exposed to unwanted cyber events. This paper shows how a Public
Key Infrastructure (PKI) design can be applied to protect digital
communication in the maritime sector. This includes new services
depending on ship-to-ship, ship-to-shore and shore-to-ship datalinks,
and where intentional and unintentional cyber threats can
have severe consequences to the cargo, crew, ships and the environment.
The design considers domain specific characteristics, such
that bandwidth is limited and ships may be offline for long periods
of time. In addition, international applicability and a cost-efficiency
have been important drivers. We present design goals derived from
workshops and surveys involving stakeholders from the maritime
domain, outline the design of the proposed PKI and explain how it
can be operated in global maritime setting.