French classification society Bureau Veritas (BV) has gone semi-offline, slowing down its services, after a cyber-attack on its computing systems.
BV, which is one of the biggest class societies for shipping, said it detected an attack on its cybersecurity system on Saturday 20 November.
"In response, all the group's cybersecurity procedures were immediately activated," it said.
"A preventive decision has been made to temporarily take our servers and data offline to protect our clients and the company while further investigations and corrective measures are in progress," BV added.
The decision to take servers and data offline has meant a partial unavailability or slowdown of BV's services and client interfaces, it said.
Inhouse BV teams supported by third-party IT experts are trying to ensure business continuity and minimise disruption, and it has involved relevant authorities which could provide it with additional support to resume normal operations in the short term.
Ironically, only a week ago BV said it was responding to the increasing threat of cyber-attacks in the maritime sector by agreeing to a partnership with insurance consultancy BESSE to support shipowners with tailored solutions to improve their cyber security.
Earlier this year French containership giant CMA CGM suffered a data leak a year after a devastating cyber-attack shut down its systems in 2020 when it took two weeks to reconnect its e-commerce network.
In July, Japan's K Line confirmed it had suffered a data security incident at one of its overseas subsidiaries, and the previous month South Korea's HMM said its email system was attacked by hackers.
One of the biggest cyber-attacks on shipping took place in 2017 when AP Moller-Maersk was hit by NotPetya malware that infected its systems and shut down every laptop and mobile device connected to it within seven minutes.
The attack affected 76 ports, 800 vessels, tens of millions of tonnes of cargo and reportedly cost the company an estimated $300m over several weeks.
