British forwarding group calls for stricter evaluation of security procedures

With news of cyber-attacks and other security breaches on the rise in the logistics world, the British International Freight Association (BIFA), a trade group representing U.K.-based freight forwarders, warned its members to review cyber-security policies in a statement released yesterday.

Robert Keen, director general of the association, said, “BIFA takes advice from various experts on this matter and we believe it would be prudent for members to review their IT-related security processes, with a view to identifying and remedying any obvious weaknesses.”

This statement comes after a year of cyber-security incidents that hit industry leaders, including seafreight giant Maersk, which was attacked last year by a ransomware virus that immobilized all files within the server and demanded payment in the form of bitcoin to have the encryptions removed — an incident that ended up costing the company US$300 million to repair, according to BIFA’s recent statement.

BIFA’s call for forwarders to evaluate their security policies, while prudent, leaves a general sense of ambiguity about what steps forwarders can take to prevent these security breaches from happening in the future. Since the 2017 incident, Maersk has teamed up with IBM to explore the potential to utilize blockchain technology to address the problem of server vulnerability in the industry.