Marine world has always been a late adapter when it comes to latest technologies and upgrades. The latest trends and advancements reach little late when compared with other sectors. For example, most of the marine industry is still stuck with paper transactions whereas only few industry pioneers like Maersk has put in paperless methods in place. One among them had pioneered and ventured into setting up a Block chain technology.
The name term “Block chain” is currently the buzzword in marine industry, not many are aware about what exactly it means and what it is expected to do or what changes are expected to come out of it in the near future if it gets successfully implemented.
Block chain in Nutshell:
Blockchain, an intelligent system that was pioneered by a person or group of people known by the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. Block chain Technology was first conceptualized in 2008 and came into existence in 2009. Block chain in a simpler way will allow distribution but will deny access and will protect digital content being copied. In simpler Terms “A New Form of Internet”. Initially this technology was introduced in establishing digital currency, BITCOINS. Due to the importance and efficiency of the technology it got evolved into other sectors now it’s the turn of Marine communities to taste the new tech flavour.
Optimizing container handling Time and Ensuring Safety:
Blockchain technology can be instrumental in Liner operations. The usage of this technology in shipping was identified in a recently published research article, it says that for example nearly 200 communications and 30 mediators were involved in moving a single refrigerated container from East Africa to Europe. Whereas the Block chain is expected to optimize the above said transactional process to a bare minimum level. The internal network transparency is established between businesses thereby allowing free flow of information. Furthermore, the author or the person who initiated the transaction will have a complete control over and offers express authority of the entire chain of transactions so that it is made foolproof by denying the chances of tampering.
Recently marine sector had witnessed the worst ever Cyberattack that resulted in substantial losses for a well reputed Global conglomerate. Attacks of that sort are expected to increase tenfold in near future. Thus, innovative Technology will enable and enhance in protecting the sensitive data of client as well as company’s own data.
Blockchain technology is expected to serve as Hacker proof as the data’s are kept decentralised. Usually data’s that are stored in a centralised fashion with the credentials such as Passwords and Usernames are more vulnerable to cyberattack and hackers exploit it. Block chain has decentralised the way of storing the data with much more improvised way of credentials. Encryption Technology is used instead of Password and Usernames. Public Keys acts as user address and Private keys acts as Password. Usually these keys are randomly generated long string of numbers. Technology also enables in appropriate validation, secured registry of the transaction. Therefore, the security challenges are superseded thereby ensuring the protection of data and secured free flow of information between businesses which is of vital importance in the current scenario.
Block chain gaining momentum:
Shipping companies had taken baby steps to adapt the Technology. As pioneers in the Industry, Maersk has kick started by adopting the Technology in collaboration with IBM.
Followed by Maersk, MOL and NYK had announced recently that they will take part in a consortium of 14 companies which will be instrumental in developing a Trade data sharing platform that will ease the flow of information and data among this trade partners without fear of any security threats. Other companies that were intended to take part in this consortium belong to the following sectors such as banking, insurance, total logistics providers and export/import companies. Other Japanese owners are likely to get into this new relationship.
As this trend inflates it is expected to shrink the world and bring business much closer. As said in an earlier example, the transactional process takes more time in handling a single container whereas this technology shall take just few hours or may even be just few minutes to complete the process loop, since all the related business are brought under one compound by Block chain. This will result in plummeting of total cost of the products and lead time without compromising the security factors.
Finally, Block chain Technology had rightly made its footprint into the marine world as this is a need of hour to counteract the Cyberattacks which is expected to scale up in due course of time.
Disclaimer: The above image is for representation of the below incident and need not be considered as an actual case image.
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