Between 2014 and 2023 cyber-attacks against the Port of Los Angeles increased from 7 million attacks per month in 2014 to 60 million monthly attacks in 2023, according to Tony Zhong, Chief Information Security Officer, Port of Los Angeles.
Zhong was speaking to the Propeller Club of Northern California on July 15, 2024 and explained that the Port had established a Cyber Operations Center to protect the Port’s digital infrastructure in 2014.
In 2017, after an attack on a major maritime company, the Port of Los Angeles and maritime stakeholders including terminals, rail, trucking and ocean carriers collaborated to develop what would become the Cyber Resilience Center (CRC) to provide a comprehensive stakeholder-based defense capability.
In 2021, IBM was selected to manage the CRC which began operations in 2022.
The establishment of the Cyber Resilience Center has made the Port of Los Angeles a leader in cyber security defense among US ports. As Zhong explained the CRC operates with an executive committee that oversees its operations and a technical committee that collaborates among the stakeholders (and the Port of LA is among them) focusing on technical issues. And when it comes to cyber security, as Zhong notes this is a case where defense has to be much better than offense as it takes only a single attack to be successful generating damage, whereas the defenders need to be able to successfully defend 100% of the time.
Zhong explained that when an attack occurs, it is reported by the stakeholder but transmitted to the other stakeholders anonymously. If another stakeholder also reports a similar attack, then those attacks will be reported to all of the stakeholders again anonymously so that they can evaluate whether they, too, have been under attack. This system preserves anonymity and proprietary information but also allows for the real time exchange of information in the event of a cyber-attack