By
Amina Munir
Africa-Press – Lesotho. The blue economy, which can be described as comprising fisheries, aquaculture, shipping, offshore energy, and port logistics, is changing in a very fast manner due to the two forces of digitalization and biological innovation. As much as this convergence is projected to bring greater productivity and sustainability, it also throws into bold relief the naked weaknesses at the border of cyberspace and life sciences. This boundary is called cyberbiosecurity, and its applicability to maritime industries cannot be emphasized enough.
Cyber adversaries are focusing their attention on maritime operations. In 2024, a DNV survey showed that 31 percent of maritime professionals have experienced at least one cyberattack in a year; this is over twice the rate in the last five years. Worryingly, 71 percent of the respondents say that their industrial assets are in a more vulnerable position than at any time, and an identical percentage believes that cybersecurity is the largest business threat.
The statistics make a grim tale. In 2023, experts at NHL Stenden University reported 64 cyber incidents in the shipping sector versus three that had been reported 10 years prior. A large number of them were associated with geopolitical players in Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. The emergence of specific cyberattacks demonstrates the existence of a situation where it is not only ports and ships that are susceptible to physical attacks but also online attacks.
These dangers are not speculative. In March 2025, the Iranian anti-Iranian hacker group Lab Dookhtegan was said to have taken down the satellite communications of 116 Iranian ships, paralyzing ship-to-ship and ship-to-port communications. In Norway, the Nordic Maritime Cyber Resilience Centre documented 239 disruptive cyberattacks in 2024, a large number of which were organized by the pro-Russian group NoName057(16). This type of event shows the ability of hostile cyber operations to paralyze maritime systems, where the impacts can cascade throughout worldwide trade and security.
Cyberbiosecurity Risks in Aquaculture and Biosurveillance
The biological aspect of the maritime operation is also subject to vulnerability. The contemporary aquaculture relies on the automation of feeding, analysis of genetic data, and monitoring. One harmful invasion may interfere with feeding timetables, forge genetic documents, or undermine water-quality regulations, resulting in not just economic damages but also ecological disasters.
The sphere of food and agriculture, closely connected with aquaculture, is already a target. The Food and Agriculture Information Sharing and Analysis Centre shows that 5.5 percent of all cyber incidents in the first quarter of 2025 involved ransomware attacks and that the number of attacks had almost doubled in comparison to the prior year. This indicates that the aquaculture systems embedded in the waterway networks are progressively falling into the focus of the cybercriminals.
Ports are going through the same process as well, with biosurveillance hubs utilizing digital diagnostics to screen invasive species or pathogens in ballast water. However, it is only up to the integrity of the data in these systems that they can be considered reliable. Distorted data may conceal the existence of invasive species, which harms environmental protection and puts the coastal ecosystems at risk.
The Grand Scale of the Blue Economy
The harms were too serious. More than 90 percent of all trade in the world is transited through oceans. By the year 2030, the blue economy will add trillions of dollars to the global GDP. However, its development is weak in case cyberbiosecurity is a secondary consideration. The magnitude of possible losses has already been proven by a single cyberattack, when one of the largest global shipping companies allegedly lost almost 300 million dollars in damages because of a malware attack.
To counter these risks, maritime governance must evolve in step with technology.
1. Maritime governance should be developed alongside technology to prevent these threats.
2. Cybersecurity should be incorporated initially when maritime bio-automation systems are being developed. Rework on the defense after deployment is usually slow, expensive, and inefficient.
3. Cyberbiosecurity cuts across IT, biology, and operations. However, a survey shows that three-quarters of the maritime professionals believe that existing cybersecurity training is insufficient. It is necessary to bridge this gap in skills.
4. The U.S. Coast Guard has already taken this step, as it requires mandatory cyber-training, incident reporting, and formal cybersecurity plans by 2027 on the part of vessels and ports. This should be emulated in other states.
5. There are no geographical boundaries in the oceans or networks. In the maritime industry, transparency needs to be embraced, whereby incident information and best practices are shared among jurisdictions.
6. Projects such as the Cyber-SHIP Lab at the University of Plymouth that model realistic shipping and port networks to test their vulnerabilities demonstrate how practical solutions can be informally directed by applied research.
Ocean Security Redefined
Whereas the blue economy used to be a concern of ship, port, and sailor safety, it has now taken on a role of safeguarding non-physical code, genetic information, automation, and biosurveillance software. Cyberbiosecurity is not a niche problem—it lies at the heart of food supply chain security, environmental soundness, and the resilience of maritime commerce. The stakes are in trillions of dollars and the stability of the world, which is why stakeholders have to respond swiftly. The role is to be played by shipbuilders, bioscientists, regulators, and cybersecurity experts. Warships and naval patrols will not just ensure the security of the oceans of the future but also firewalls, encrypted bio-databases, and hardy digital-biological protection.
It is a big challenge, but so too is the opportunity: to make a blue economy a prosperity engine without jeopardizing its digital and biological underpinnings. In addition to the technical facet, the issue of cyberbiosecurity within the blue economy carries deep geopolitical consequences as well. This is exemplified by the Indian Ocean, which has one of the busiest sea routes in the world. The Gwadar Port in Pakistan and Chabahar Port in Iran, which are alternative entrances to Central Asia, are becoming more reliant on digitalized logistics and biosecurity measures in order to regulate maritime traffic and environmental regulations. Any successful cyber intrusion would not only put these facilities on their knees but also cause diplomatic flashpoints, as bio-data is used to show that one state caused environmental damage or food insecurity.
The same applies to small island developing states, which depend on aquaculture and fisheries as the basis of up to 50 percent of their GDP: a planned ransomware attack may ruin their economies in one fell swoop. Meanwhile, not only are large powers like China and the United States heavily investing in digital infrastructure at sea, but they are also increasing the stakes of cyberbiosecurity as a security issue and as a novel competitive landscape. This implies that cyberbiosecurity is not merely a question of preserving the ecosystems or trade routes but rather an issue of preserving the reputations of nations and geopolitical stability. As the law of the sea once applied to physical waters, so now a new system of cyberbiosecurity governance needs to be made to safeguard the hybrid digital-biological oceans of the 21st century.
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