Cyberattack: The Maersk Global Supply Chain Meltdown Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Cyberattack: The Maersk Global Supply Chain Meltdown Case Solution

Introduction

Maersk Line was founded in 1904 when A.P. Muller bought a used steamship which was operating out of Svedberg’s Danish port. To meet the demands of the Great War; the company added more ships ten years later. Maersk established its office in New York and built its own shipyard soon after the war. The majority of the company’s ships were held by the allied countries during the Second World War and many were destroyed during the war. After the war, the company was able to resume its operations on its original routes and added new routes through Middle East and Africa as well (DAmore McKim North eastern university, 2019)

Problem Statement

After the death of A.P Moller in 1965, half of Denmark’s merchant fleet was operated by the company. The company started to begin operating vessels in 1970, which became trademark of the company’s global shipping operations. Damco, a leading provider of supply chain management was acquired by the company in 2005, which was then merged with Maersk logistics.

Maersk managed approximately around 18% of world’s container shipping by 2015, which means that every 15 minutes on average; a container will come to a port. Although the management of the system is typically electronic but the system has not been changed for decades. Most of the company’s dealings were managed on papers and there was a lack of proper consistency between the countries. Therefore, Snabe, the chairman of A.P. Moller,focused on modernizing the supply chain partly by digitizing those processes.

S.W.O.T Analysis

Strength

  • The company’s culture is international dynamic because it operates in several countries and deals with different stakeholders.
  • The company has its presence in important sectors, such as: transport, logistics and energy.
  • The relationship between the company and its client is pleasant.
  • The value creation for the stakeholders is the main strategy of the company.

Weakness

  • Due to the increasing competition; the volume of business has fallen, which has resultedin an increased operational cost.
  • The cost of the company’s operations pose a critical challenge to the business.

Opportunities

  • There are numerous technologies in the field of logistics. These technologies help the logistics companies to rationalize their operations and helping the customers in reducing their costs.

Threats

  • There is more growth in the western countries as compared to the developing countries. Some of the risks linked with these markets are poor road, infrastructure, political instability and inflation.

Recommendations

  • In order to mitigate these types of attacks in future; the company’s systems must be upgraded and patched, to protect from different viruses and malware's.
  • All data, backups and system accessible must not be accessible from the internet sources.
  • There must be a backup plan in face of the Business continuity plan and disasters plan.
  • As per the survey of the crew connectivity 2015;only 12% of crew had received cyber security training. Therefore, the company must provide additional training in future, so that it wouldn’t face any major issue again.
  • Strong industrial relationships must be developed across the borders, which would help the company to benefit from the advanced knowledge, know how and technology as well.
  • The crew on ships must be aware of different methods of Information system so that they could easily detect any sort of deliberate and misuse acts.
  • The usage of systems that rely on data and analytics must be eliminated,which would help in minimizing the risk of unauthorized access and malicious attacks on ships and network.
  • System upgrades should be inspected by the management to guarantee the security of data in order to protect the data from getting lost or stolen. Additionally, there should be manual record-keeping of the operational services, which include clients associated with the shipments, orders and payments to avoid the data loss........................

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