The Port of Los Angeles has reached an agreement with IBM to design and operate a Cyber Resilience Center, focused on detecting and protecting against malicious cyber attack.
Port officials, who announced the deal on Monday, Dec. 7, said such attacks could affect cargo flow, port officials said, and the system is expected to improve the quality, quantity and speed of cyber information sharing within the port community.
“As our port increasingly relies on data integration to guide its cargo operations and processes, detection and protection against cyber incidents is critical,” Port Executive Director Gene Seroka said. “This new Cyber Resilience Center will not only provide the port an early warning system against port-wide cyber attacks but result in greater collective knowledge and data sharing throughout our entire port supply chain ecosystem.”
It was not immediately clear when the Cyber Resilience Center will be fully operational.
Currently, companies and stakeholders at the port monitor and respond to cyber threats individually. The new center will still allow stakeholders control over their own information and security protocols, but will serve as a “system of systems,” port officials said, and will be a focal point across all participating supply chain stakeholders for cyber threats.
“Now more than ever, there’s a critical need for global supply chains to operate securely and undisrupted,” said Wendi Whitmore, vice president of IBM’s Security X-Force. “As the Port of Los Angeles takes these significant steps to strengthen the cyber resilience of its ecosystem, we’re proud it selected IBM’s premier capabilities in threat intelligence, AI and cloud security to help achieve this.”
The CRC will enable participants to quickly share threat indicators with each other and better coordinate defensive responses as needed, port officials said, and will also serve as an information resource that stakeholders may use to help restore operations following an attack.
The $6.8 million, three-year agreement with IBM includes hardware, software, and services to design, install, operate and maintain the CRC.
In 2014, the port established the Cyber Security Operations Center, which serves as a centralized location to proactively monitor the port’s own technology environment to prevent and detect cyber incidents.
