Transforming the Shipping Industry with IoT Technologies Despite the fact that ships carried an estimated 9.6 billion tons of cargo in 2013, accounting for 80 percent of global trade by volume and more than 70 percent of global trade by value, the fragmented nature of the supply chain, from production to warehouse to shore to ship, has made it difficult for producers and transporters to effectively monitor their cargo between ports. And while shipping for centuries has connected faraway places, people and industries, the inherently isolated nature of ships at sea presents a unique set of logistical and connectivity challenges for the maritime industry as it seeks to deliver goods on time and in mint condition, and to ensure the safety of crews. The rise of IoT technologies has inspired the Swedish communications company Ericsson to tackle the dual challenges of supply-chain fragmentation and maritime-vessel isolation with one solution: the Ericsson Maritime ICT Cloud platform. The Maritime ICT Cloud provides shipping organizations with the ability to connect on a unified platform and to link those vessels onto the same network, allowing revolutionary data sharing within the organizational ecosystem. Sensors monitor everything from vessel location and speed to the status and temperature of refrigerated cargo containers, giving shipping companies and producers real-time information on their goods. Additionally, Ericsson’s system fosters unprecedented connectivity at nearly every part of the supply chain. The system not only monitors cargo and the ships that carry it, but also gives stakeholders across the industry the ability to obtain and analyze real-time data from production warehouse to final recipient. “This is a real game changer for the shipping industry,” said Douglas Watson, Ericsson’s director of shipping. “By connecting the entire supply chain into a single, integrated system, we can achieve an unprecedented level of efficiency from warehouse to customer. The Maritime ICT Cloud platform also allows us to make our ships safer and less expensive through real-time data analysis of potential dangers and inefficiencies.” The Maritime ICT Cloud also connects embedded engine- and hull-monitoring systems with bridge communications in a way that reduces inefficiencies, risks and overall cost, effectively delivering an Internet provider protocol for proprietary maritime systems and providing the connectivity for those systems. With satellite technology providing sea-toshore connectivity, stakeholders can make informed decisions to strengthen crew welfare,

protect goods in transit and maximize route efficiency.

This means that there is an incredible amount of IoT data transfer and in some cases automated controls associated with IoT sensors (temperature controls for example). in the case of Ericsson Maritime ICT upgrading their fleet of freight operations on ships, it has helped them optimise their logistics but, as with any optimisation and automation, these optimisations give a myriad of opportunities for bad actors to access their data and controls.

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