The Risks of Marine Cloud Computing

Abstract

The maritime industry has an increasing reliance on information and communication technology (ICT) systems to ensure efficient operations, moving their threat picture into the cyber domain. Meanwhile, cloud computing has impacted how ICT systems are operated, which has increased the efficiency and introduced cost savings. These benefits should be attractive to the maritime industry.

This master's thesis will investigate the risks associated with moving marine applications into cloud computing environments; it will address this problem with a divide and conquer approach. The first part is a literature review of recent research to gain an overview of issues related to general cloud computing and maritime ICT. The second part is performing a risk analysis of a marine themed Software as a Service (SaaS) solution running in a real life cloud computing environment, to get an insight into the risks related to the system.

The solution is constructed specially for this case and allows ships to report information, which port authorities can handle in a streamlined way. The risk assessment follows a qualitative approach and will give a general indication of risk.

The results from the literature review and the risk management process will provide input to approach the research question, giving an insight into multiple dimensions generating risks. The thesis will touch on issues from cloud computing, maritime environments, and human factors.