Cybersecurity for yachts and their owners
Hull & Firewall secures the electronics that keep a yacht moving, connected, and safe — navigation, satcom, propulsion control, and the crew and guest networks tied into all three. One team, one vessel, no gaps between systems.
Working with owners, captains, and management companies across the Med, Caribbean, and US East Coast.
IMO resolutions made cyber risk management a required part of a vessel's safety management system.
Compromised guest access point is often all it takes to reach navigation or engine networks on an unsegmented yacht.
Satcom and crew networks stay connected at sea, which means monitoring can't stop at the dock.
Downtime tolerated on navigation and propulsion systems during any assessment we run.
A yacht isn't one network — it's several, often bridged together by whoever installed them last. We treat it as a single attack surface and secure it that way.
Hardening chart plotters, AIS, and positioning systems against spoofing, tampering, and the outdated software still common on bridge equipment.
Locking down the satellite link that carries navigation data, crew email, and guest internet, so it can't become the single point of entry.
Segmenting operational technology — engine monitoring, ballast, and automation systems — away from anything guests or crew can reach directly.
Building guest wifi and entertainment systems on a network that has no path back to the vessel's operational or crew systems.
Access controls for crew devices and accounts, plus short, practical training so the newest deckhand isn't the weakest link.
A response plan built for limited bandwidth and no local IT support. Our 24/7 line, 844-411-HACK, reaches our team directly from anywhere the vessel operates.
Not a policy document — the specific technical controls we install, configure, and keep running on board.
Most yachts go through these four stages once, then move into ongoing monitoring for the seasons after.
We map every networked system on board, from bridge electronics to the crew mess TV, and identify how they connect to each other.
We segment networks, patch what can be patched, and close the gaps between guest, crew, and operational systems.
Once the vessel is underway, we watch for unusual activity on satcom and onboard networks, at sea and in port.
If something happens, our team is reachable directly — no ticket queue — and works the incident until systems are clean.
Not a hacker seizing the helm — the pattern we see most often is a fake invoice that looks exactly like a real one, and a payment that goes out before anyone checks by phone.
Access. A phishing email tricks someone — often the captain — into entering credentials on a fake login page, or a stolen session token skips the password entirely.
Silent observation. The attacker doesn't act right away. They read real threads, learn the vendors, learn how a normal invoice is worded.
Hiding the trail. Invisible mail-filtering rules reroute the real replies, so the target never sees the conversation that would tip them off.
The strike. At the right moment — a fuel bill is due, a purchase price is agreed — a near-identical email arrives with one thing changed: the bank account.
Payment sent. Because everything else looked normal, it clears — sometimes six or seven figures — before anyone checks by phone.
Wire fraud isn't the only thing waiting on the other side of a stolen password. The same phishing email or exposed credential that opens a mailbox can just as easily deploy ransomware — the attacker simply chooses to lock systems instead of quietly redirecting a payment. We've seen a charter yacht find its entertainment and operational systems locked down the morning it was due to depart — nothing more sophisticated than the access step in the chain above. Reporting from cybersecurity and maritime sources has described a broader pattern of the same thing happening across the industry, including navigation systems held for ransom, though owners' understandable reluctance to go public means most of these incidents never become a named, public case.
This is why endpoint detection, patch management, and tested offline backups sit alongside MFA and crew training on our controls list — access is the first failure, but what happens after access is what determines how bad the outcome is.
Cyber risk management is now part of a vessel's safety management system, not an optional extra. We document our work against the frameworks your insurer, flag state, or management company will ask about.