Cyber Regulatory Landscape and Industry Responses in the Shipbuilding and Maritime Sector – Part 4: Why Shipowners Must Establish an Owner Cybersecurity Policy

Why Shipowners Must Establish an Owner Cybersecurity Policy

The Single Standard That Determines the Future of the Entire Fleet

1. The biggest issue in the shipbuilding and maritime industry has been the absence of a unified standard

Shipyards work based on their own standards.
Suppliers produce documents based on their own interpretations.
Classification societies enforce their own requirements.
System integrators act according to their own methodologies.

And in the middle of this fragmented ecosystem,
the party that suffers the most is the shipowner.

Because cybersecurity is not
a “single-vessel problem.”
It is a fleet-wide operational model that affects decades of operation.

Despite this reality, many shipowners still rely on:

  • Shipyard-provided documents

  • Supplier-provided documentation

  • Class-driven interpretations

without having their own Owner Policy.

This approach is no longer sustainable.
In the era of UR E26 and UR E27, the shipowner must define the standard.


2. What is an Owner Cybersecurity Policy?

This is the starting point of everything**

An Owner Cybersecurity Policy is:

“The shipowner’s top-level standard defining the desired cybersecurity posture and operational baseline for the entire fleet.”

It becomes:

  • The design standard that shipyards must follow

  • The development and documentation standard suppliers must follow

  • The maintenance and operational standard for the vessel’s lifecycle

With an Owner Policy:

  • Variations across shipyards disappear

  • Supplier documentation quality becomes consistent

  • Fleet-wide cyber resilience becomes uniform

  • UR E26/E27 compliance improves dramatically

The Owner Policy becomes the shipowner’s cyber operations philosophy, expressed as a formal governing standard.

3. Without an Owner Policy, the fleet becomes “random”

When no Owner Policy exists, the following inevitable problems emerge:

Problem 1. Different E26/E27 quality across shipyards

Some shipyards create deep, structured analyses.
Others produce minimal compliance documents.

The result:
Ships in the same fleet end up with completely different cybersecurity levels.

Problem 2. Supplier documentation quality becomes uncontrollable

Suppliers repeatedly ask:

“Should we follow the shipyard’s standard?”
“Or the class society?”
“Or do you have your own requirements?”

Without a clear owner-defined standard,
suppliers naturally choose the cheapest, lowest-effort path.

This leads to:

  • Weak E27 documentation

  • Poor SCARP content

  • Inaccurate RA/RM results

Problem 3. Fleet-wide management becomes impossible

If every shipyard and supplier uses its own formatting, structure, and interpretation:

  • Annual audits become inconsistent

  • Incident response becomes chaotic

  • MOC (Management of Change) cannot function

  • Cyber insurance alignment becomes difficult

Operational costs for the shipowner increase threefold or more.

4. A shipowner with an Owner Policy gains long-term competitive advantage

With an Owner Policy, the shipowner provides a single, authoritative standard to all industry partners.

Benefit 1. Differences across shipyards disappear

Shipyards no longer interpret requirements independently.
They apply the owner’s standard as written.

Benefit 2. Supplier documentation becomes standardized

Suppliers produce documentation aligned with the shipowner’s templates and checklists, resulting in consistent, high-quality outputs.

Benefit 3. SCARP (E26) quality improves dramatically

The essence of SCARP is integrating system documents into a unified structure.
Without an Owner Policy, integration is impossible.
With a policy, harmonization becomes straightforward.

Benefit 4. Fleet-wide monitoring and incident response become achievable

When the entire fleet is built on a consistent standard, shipowners can unify:

  • Monitoring

  • Patch management

  • Cyber incident response

  • Change management

  • Annual cyber surveys

This is what true fleet-wide cyber resilience looks like.

5. Leading global shipowners are already moving toward Owner Policy–centric governance

Across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe,
major shipowners are rapidly shifting toward this approach.

Especially those managing large fleets understand the challenge:

“Different standards for every project create chaos.”

They are now building four core capabilities:

  • Integrated Owner Policy

  • CRSI-centric governance

  • Supplier documentation standardization

  • Fleet-level SCARP framework

This is not simply regulatory compliance.
It is the future operating model of shipowners.

6. Conclusion — An Owner Policy is no longer optional.

It is essential

The era of shipyards, suppliers, and class societies dictating the standard is over.
The shipowner must now define the standard.

There is only one factor that determines the fleet’s cyber resilience:

“Does the shipowner have an Owner Cybersecurity Policy?”

The digital transformation of the shipbuilding and maritime sectors
ultimately begins with standardizing the shipowner’s policy.

The Shipjobs series will continue to share insights
and guide the industry through this transformation.

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