When the Ship Goes Dark: Preparing Mariners for the Cyber Threat They Can't See

This October, in the port city of Brest, France, a room full of maritime professionals will sit down at tables and try to figure out what to do next.

The exercise is called “Storm @ Sea - A Hands-On Tabletop Challenge in Maritime Cybersecurity”, and it is the centrepiece of a joint workshop being proposed for Sea Tech Week® 2026 by two institutions that have lots in common, but with definite differences as well. The Antwerp Maritime Academy in Belgium is one of Europe's oldest and most respected maritime colleges; while the National Maritime College of Ireland, part of Munster Technological University, is a joint venture with the Irish Naval Service, and is situated in the deep-water harbour of Ringaskiddy, County Cork.

Let's start with the basics. Who are you and what do your institutions do?

Yves Van Seters: I work at the Antwerp Maritime Academy - or AMA, as we call it. The institution has been training mariners for over a hundred years. We are based in the port of Antwerp, which is one of the largest ports in Europe, so we are quite literally in the heart of global maritime traffic. We offer bachelor's and master's programmes in nautical sciences and ship engineering, and we have a growing research portfolio. Maritime cybersecurity has become a major focus of that research.

Kevin Fitzgibbon: And I'm based at the National Maritime College of Ireland, which is part of Munster Technological University. NMCI is Ireland's dedicated maritime education institution - we train deck officers, engineers, electro-technical officers and shore-based professionals. We sit right on Cork Harbour, one of the finest natural harbours in the world, so there is a very direct connection between what we teach and what happens out on the water. Like AMA, we've been investing heavily in understanding the cyber dimension of maritime operations.

You both attended Sea Tech Week® 2024, in Brest. What brought you there, and what came out of it?

Van Seters: Sea Tech Week is one of the premier gatherings for maritime innovation in Europe. Brest has a long history as a naval city and a hub for ocean science, and the event brings together researchers, industry professionals, naval architects, policymakers,etc.  The people who genuinely shape the direction of the sector. For AMA, it was an opportunity to present our research, to benchmark ourselves against what others are doing, and frankly, to find collaborators.

Fitzgibbon: That last point is crucial. We've been doing serious work on maritime cyber resilience in Ireland, but this is a field where the problems are too big for any single institution to address alone. Sea Tech Week 2024 was where AMA and MTU connected properly, and it became clear very quickly that we were working on complementary pieces of the same puzzle. The conversation about proposing a joint workshop in 2026 grew naturally from that. We were both thinking: the field needs more practical, hands-on engagement. Not just papers. Not just panels. Something where people actually have to make decisions under pressure.

Why maritime cybersecurity? Why now?

Van Seters: Let me give you a number: roughly eighty percent of global trade by volume travels by sea. When people talk about supply chains, they often think about ports and warehouses. But the ship is the essential link, and ships are increasingly vulnerable in ways that most people, even many maritime professionals, do not fully appreciate. The digitisation and automation of vessels has accelerated enormously over the past decade. Modern ships became networked systems. Navigation, propulsion management, cargo monitoring, communications - all of it is increasingly integrated and connected to shore-based operations. That connectivity is certainly efficient and useful. But it also expands the attack surface.

Fitzgibbon: Also the geopolitical context matters enormously. We are living in an era of significant instability. Critical maritime chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea corridor, the Baltic, have become sites of tension and, in some cases, active threat. State actors and criminal groups have both demonstrated the capacity and the willingness to target maritime infrastructure. GPS spoofing or jamming incidents have been documented. Ransomware attacks on shipping companies have caused major disruptions. This is not a hypothetical threat. It is happening.

Van Seters: What makes it especially dangerous is a knowledge gap. People ashore, in shipping company offices and port authorities, often do understand what a cyber incident looks like, but are missing the perspective of a crew member on a vessel at sea.  His or her priority is not analyzing code, it’s keeping everybody aboard alive and the cargo safely out of harm’s way. And crew members, in turn have not been trained to understand the wider consequences: what happens to cargo operations, to insurance, to the company's entire supply chain when their ship is compromised. The incident has operational impact on board, but it ripples outward in ways the crew may not see. Our workshop is designed to bridge exactly that gap.

Tell me about the workshop itself. What will participants actually do for two and a half hours?

Fitzgibbon: The centrepiece is a tabletop exercise built around a realistic cyber incident at sea. We've drawn on real events, things that have actually happened in the maritime sector.  We distilled these events into a scenario that feels credible and forces participants to grapple with genuinely hard questions.

Teams will be presented with an unfolding crisis. A vessel is underway. Systems start behaving anomalously. The exercise unfolds in stages, and at each stage, teams have to decide: what do we know? What do we do? Who do we tell? How do we maintain the safety of the vessel while managing an active cyber incident? How does shore-side management respond when they're getting only partial information?

Van Seters: The beauty of the tabletop format is that it creates a safe space to fail. In a real incident, the pressure is immense and the consequences of mistakes are serious. In an exercise, you can discover the gaps in your knowledge and your protocols before a real crisis reveals them for you. We expect participants to argue, to disagree, to find that their assumptions don't hold. That discomfort is the point. The session is interactive throughout. We are not delivering a lecture, we rather facilitate a crisis.

Who is the audience for this workshop?

Van Seters: We've designed this to be open to lots of people. The participants might be maritime officers, shipping company security managers, port authority officials, naval personnel, researchers, trainers - anyone with a professional stake in understanding how cyber incidents play out at sea and on shore.

Fitzgibbon: We want fresh voices and diverse experiences in the room. The more varied the backgrounds at the tables, the richer the exercise becomes.

What are your expectations for Sea Tech Week® 2026 more broadly?

Van Seters: Brest is the right place for this conversation. It has a naval heritage, a serious academic and research community, and it sits on Sea Tech Week, a reminder that the sea is not a metaphor. It is the actual infrastructure of the global economy. I hope the event continues to draw the people who are shaping maritime policy and innovation in Europe, and I hope our workshop contributes something genuinely useful to that conversation.

Fitzgibbon: My expectation is that the room will be surprised by something. Surprised by how quickly a simulated cyber scenario escalates, or by how differently the same situation looks to a deck officer versus a shore-based manager. That moment of recognition - oh, I hadn't thought about it from that angle - is where real learning happens. If we can produce that a dozen times over the course of two and a half hours, I'll consider it a success.

Workshop at Sea Tech Week® 2026

Storm @ Sea: A High-Stakes Maritime Cyber Exercise

Date: 7 October 2026
Session: Afternoon track - Security & Technologies
Event: Sea Tech Week® 2026, Brest, France

Take part in this immersive tabletop exercise and explore how maritime professionals can respond to a high-stakes cyber incident at sea.

Registration and programme