SAMSA continues to recover systems after breach

Cyberattack on South African Maritime Safety Authority

SOUTH AFRICA:  The South African Maritime Safety Authority’s (SAMSA) ICT team is continuing to investigate and work on recovering their systems after a cyber security attack impacted its information technology systems in mid-April.

In a statement to stakeholders issued on 20 April, SAMSA noted that the breach had “hampered” its ability to render critical services to customers and encouraged parties to contact them through their port offices.

As of the end of April, the Authority was still attempting to confirm the intent of the incident and to recover the entire system. “We cannot conclude that we are targeted as no one came forward to claim the responsibility or even ask for ransom,” they told us in response to questions sent to their media department.

Although not all of the systems were impacted, the Authority chose to disable access to curb further unforeseen risks while an assessment attempted to determine if any information has been compromised.

SAMSA has assured maritime stakeholders that contingency plans are in place to respond to any incidents at sea and confirms that incident response will “not be negatively impacted”.

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