Ocean Specialists Inc. (OSI) is pleased to announce that the company’s Director for Business Development, Tony Mosley, will be moderating a panel—The Silent Assassin: Protecting Submarine Cables from the growing Cybersecurity Threats—at Submarine Networks World, taking place in Singapore from September 24–26, 2024. The panel will include a mix of operations and policy thought leaders from the international submarine cable industry.
- Hugh McGarry, CEO, Garnet Consulting
- Asha Hemrajani, Senior Research Fellow, Centre of Excellence for National Security – Nanyang Technological University
- Mahesh Jaishankar, Datacenter and Network Infrastructure Expert
- Ashish Ahuja, Founder & CEO, Sloka Partners
Simply put, cybersecurity refers to the safeguarding and protection of networks, servers, devices, computers, and data from unauthorized access or threats. Planning and protection are fundamental for network system security and integrity.
99.5% of the world’s information travels on submarine cables every day, which can’t be replicated by satellites, no matter how many we put into space. Satellites are certainly a vital component of global communications and vital for areas underserved by submarine and terrestrial cables. Key commercial data, national security information, and media content are transmitted around the world via the 528 submarine cables that currently reside on the ocean floor.
According to the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC), each year there are approximately 180 cable breaks, cuts, abrasions, and unplanned events that disrupt communications on these vital cables. That amounts to average of one outage every two-three days!
The economic data that is sent along these subsea fiber highways represents over $15 trillion in banking and trade transactions. When outages occur, they can impact global trade and financial settlements significantly. The cybersecurity risks associated with any major breach to this network of submarine cables would far eclipse the major disruption caused by CrowdStrike outage earlier this year.
The world is so interconnected today that life without these cables would almost be unrecognizable. Protecting them sufficiently is something that cable experts have long believed is of utmost importance.
Best practices dictate that submarine cables and their network of wet and dry plant infrastructure have the highest available network protection due to human reliance on data for national security, economic activity, and, in more recent times, entertainment. The heightened security of submarine networks involves protecting Network Management Systems (NMS) from external network disruptions, the cable landing stations from unauthorized access, and its most vulnerable shore ends from other external threats.
Cybersecurity experts recommend using the full view of submarine cables from end to end and establishing a baseline security profile view for each cable and cable landing station. Access and egress to systems, building management systems to keep the network secure, and the risks low—all of this will be discussed next week. Without a holistic view of how we manage submarine cables and its many interfaces, there will always be the increased risk of cyber threats. Any unauthorized access could be disastrous on a global level.
OSI’s role in Submarine Cable Protection and Sensing is expanding to support the coming wave of Cybersecurity safeguards needed to keep this critical infrastructure protected. For more information, please contact OSI at connect@oceanspecialists.com.