Japanese shipping company NYK and Norway-based maritime digital platform provider Dualog have signed a long-term industrial research and development project agreement that would receive support from the Norwegian government fund.

The agreement will see the development of digitized products and services across a testbed of 50 vessels with a view to eventually being rolled out across the NYK’s fleet of 250 ships.

Innovation Norway, a governmental instrument for innovation and development of Norwegian enterprise and industry, will fund the project over the next two years.

Back in 2017, NYK and Dualog entered into a strategic partnership focused on pushing the boundaries for automation, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Big Data analysis. The partners have been developing data-sharing between ship and shore. In addition, they have launched a new Cepa Shield project that focuses on cybersecurity.

As explained, it will be possible to apply the cyber risk management system developed by the Cepa Shield project to all NYK-operated vessels, providing multiple layers of risk management.

When a cyber-attack comes from the outside, these features will help NYK to grasp from shore the condition of each vessel against the attack. NYK can then remain aware of any ships subject to a concentrated attack and in need of immediate protection.

The system will collect a variety of traffic information such as accessing servers from each application service. These will be merged into a monitoring system that will make it easy to determine what is going on and make it easier to take action if necessary.

“What we will be achieving is controlling communication at a new level, regarding protocols and security, but also in the way we will integrate different communications equipment onboard ship,” Morten Lind-Olsen, CEO of Dualog, said.

“We will also look at the way we want to dynamically control the bandwidth so we can undertake traffic shaping between different services.”