How to Prepare for Cyber Risks Disrupting Cargo Movement

How to Prepare for Cyber Risks Disrupting Cargo Movement
November 9, 2026 10 mins

How to Prepare for Cyber Risks Disrupting Cargo Movement

Delivery workers in a van review a tablet and parcel, illustrating cyber risk in transportation and logistics.

One cyber incident can quickly become a physical, operational and financial loss for transportation and logistics organizations. Scenario analysis helps identify vulnerabilities, clarify risk ownership and test whether insurance will respond as intended before disruption occurs.

Key Takeaways
  1. Compromised instructions, location data and connected platforms can divert cargo, damage goods and stop operations.
  2. One cyber event can spread across supply chains, organizations and insurance policies, exposing gaps between coverage, contractual liability and vendor protections.
  3. Scenario analysis helps turn cyber exposure into operational resilience. Testing how disruption could spread enables organizations to strengthen risk controls, prepare operational responses and address potential coverage gaps.

Cyber threats are now a persistent reality for the terminals, distribution centers, shipping networks and critical infrastructure that keep global trade moving. As the transportation and logistics industry becomes more dependent on interconnected systems, operational technology and third-party providers, just one incident can disrupt cargo flows, physical operations and commercial activity across supply chains. 

The resulting losses may not fit neatly within a specific insurance policy. A single event could trigger cyber, cargo, marine, property, crime and business interruption policies, while blurring contractual liability across shippers, carriers, logistics providers and technology vendors. Historically low cyber insurance take-up in the industry leaves businesses even more vulnerable to gaps that may only be revealed after a major loss.

“Assessing cyber as an operational, financial and insurance challenge, not simply an IT or OT issue, is the key to resilience,” says Jose Harfuch, Specialty Leader, Transportation & Logistics, Latin America.

$250M

Maersk estimated a $250-$300 million financial impact from the 2017 NotPetya cyber attack.

Source: Maersk 2017 financial reporting

  • 120M

    The Port of Los Angeles blocked more than 120 million cyber attack attempts in August 2026.

    Source: Bloomberg

  • 103%

    Global maritime cyber incidents grew 103% in 2025, driven by DDoS attacks, ransomware and malware infections.

    Source: CYTUR/Industrial Cyber; Verisk CargoNet

  • 61%

    Cyber incidents affecting logistics organizations increased 61% in 2025 and are forecast to double in 2026.

    Source: Everstream Analytics

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AI-enabled phishing, social engineering and automated attack techniques are expected to accelerate threats further. Transportation and logistics firms should prepare for more frequent incidents and build resilience to repeated disruptions since major cyber incidents are no longer rare events.

Mani Dhesi
Head of Growth and Client Management, Cyber Solutions, Asia Pacific

The following scenarios show how cyber incidents can disrupt the movement of goods, and how scenario analysis can help identify vulnerabilities, clarify responsibility and test whether insurance will respond as intended.

Scenario #1: When Rogue Digital Instructions Divert Physical Cargo

The Risk: Cyber criminals can impersonate carriers, compromise broker communications, and manipulate cargo release and routing instructions. Unlike conventional theft, cargo may leave a port, warehouse or distribution center through a seemingly legitimate transaction, supported by valid-looking credentials and documentation. The party handling the cargo then acts on a fraudulent digital instruction, causing goods to be delivered to the wrong party or destination.

In maritime operations, manipulated navigation or operational controls can also impact vessel navigation or interfere with cargo flows. This can potentially lead to collisions and cause damage to vessels, cargo or surrounding infrastructure.

The Fallout: Cargo loss, misdelivery or diversion can result in delays, recovery costs and disputes over responsibility. Because employees or logistics partners may have released goods in response to fraudulent instructions, the incident might not meet an insurance policy’s conventional definition of theft.

Disputes can also arise over who authenticated the instruction, who authorized the release and which party had responsibility for verifying the carrier, destination or documentation. The resulting loss could touch cargo, crime, cyber, professional liability or contractual liability cover, without falling cleanly into any one policy.

How to Prepare: Determine whether fraudulent digital instructions would be treated as theft, fraud, misdelivery and/or a cyber event in insurance programs and contracts. Organizations should also establish strong verification controls for changes to carriers, destinations and cargo release instructions, and clarify who bears responsibility if staff act on fraudulent information.

Scenario #2: When Location Data is Compromised 

The Risk: If GPS, telematics and tracking data is manipulated, spoofed, delayed or unavailable, a shipment can appear to be following its approved route when it is actually stationary, diverted or entering an unauthorized location. Operational teams may then make decisions based on a false picture of the shipment, delaying intervention, giving customers inaccurate updates or starting recovery efforts too late. 

Unreliable data can also make it harder to demonstrate compliance with route restrictions, sanctions controls or other legal obligations. 

The Fallout: Cargo could be stolen, spoiled or delayed before an organization recognizes the problem. If coverage or recovery depends on demonstrating where the cargo was and whether continuous tracking controls were operating, an unreliable location record can also complicate liability allocation and insurance claims. Responsibility may be contested between the cargo owner, carrier, freight forwarder and tracking provider, particularly if continuous tracking is part of a policy condition or warranty.

How to Prepare: Plan for both the loss of trusted visibility and the loss of the cargo. Organizations should confirm alternative ways to verify location and chain of custody, define escalation points when tracking data becomes unreliable, and determine how tracking failures would affect recovery and insurance coverage.

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After a loss, the cargo owner might seek recovery from the freight forwarder, who may then pursue the GPS provider. Third-party and vendor liability limits must therefore be sufficient to cover cargo loss or damage, loss of the vessel or vehicle, and any resulting consequential losses.

Jose Harfuch
Specialty Leader, Transportation & Logistics, Latin America

Scenario #3: When Connected Operations Produce Physical Loss

The Risk: Connected trucks, refrigeration equipment, warehouse systems, vessels and port technologies create pathways for cyber incidents to affect physical operations. A cyber attack on a connected operation could disable refrigeration, shut down automated handling equipment, or stop vessels and containers from moving through a port. 

The risk becomes more significant when large volumes of cargo depend on the same interconnected facilities and technologies. “Ports, terminals, warehouses and logistics providers are major points of accumulation risk,” says Stephen Rudman, Head of Marine, Asia. “A cyber incident at one of these locations can affect multiple cargo owners, customers and supply chain participants simultaneously.”

The Fallout: Technology failure can cause operational interruption, physical loss or both. A refrigeration outage can spoil inventory, while a disabled terminal system can immobilize cargo across an entire facility. Losses can multiply as systems or equipment remain unavailable, particularly when manual workarounds cannot sustain normal cargo volumes.

The insurance analysis may be clearer for direct operational interruption than cargo diversion. However, physical damage caused by outages in technology systems could still raise coverage issues across cyber, property and equipment policies.

How to Prepare: Prioritize the connected assets that could cause the greatest physical loss or concentration of goods. Organizations can use scenario testing to establish how long operations can continue without those systems, whether safe manual workarounds are viable, and whether the resulting physical damage and business interruption losses would be covered as intended.

Scenario #4: When Third-Party Dependencies Become Coverage Dependencies

The Risk: Transportation and logistics organizations increasingly depend on third-party providers to support their operations and supply chains. A cyber incident affecting a critical provider can thus significantly disrupt cargo movement, even when the affected organization’s own systems have not been compromised. One provider’s outage could also simultaneously affect numerous owners, operators, customers and locations.

The Fallout: Organizations may be unable to book, locate, release, route or process cargo because a service they do not own or control is unavailable. Losses can accumulate across several customers, facilities and supply chain participants, making the total exposure difficult to quantify.

Contracts might provide only limited recovery if a vendor’s liability cap is substantially below the operational loss it causes. Insurance could also respond differently depending on whether the provider is named, whether contingent business interruption is included, and whether the provider is classified as infrastructure or caught by a relevant exclusion. This creates a distinct coverage issue: The loss originates outside the organization, but its operational and financial consequences sit within it.

How to Prepare: Manage critical providers according to the scale of the dependency they create. Organizations should identify vendors whose failure could stop cargo movement across operations, assess concentration across shared providers, and compare plausible losses with contractual liability caps and contingent business interruption protection. 

9

When transportation and logistics organizations are assessed across nine key cyber security measures, third-party controls receive the lowest average scores.

Source: Aon’s Cyber Quotient Evaluation

Test the Loss Before Cyber Risk Tests the Program

Increasing regulatory pressure is driving more cyber governance and risk management in transportation and logistics, but maturity still lags in parts of the industry. Thirty-eight percent of these organizations do not conduct sufficient cyber tabletop exercises, according to Aon’s Cyber Quotient Evaluation, while 29% lack annual penetration testing. 

Those gaps can make it difficult to understand how a cyber event would affect operations in practice. Effective scenario analysis helps organizations connect cyber risks to operational disruption, financial loss, contractual liability and insurance response.

Scenario analysis should focus on five priorities:

  1. Map critical dependencies: Identify the systems, facilities and providers whose failure could interrupt cargo movement.
  2. Model the blast radius: Assess how disruption could spread across goods, locations, customers and supply chain partners.
  3. Quantify the consequences: Estimate physical loss, downtime, cargo damage, contractual liabilities and contingent losses.
  4. Test operational resilience: Confirm whether controls, escalation procedures and manual workarounds can contain the disruption.
  5. Review insurance response: Examine how relevant policies, conditions, exclusions, sublimits and vendor protections would respond to the modeled loss.

“Organizations best positioned to manage cyber risk treat it as an operational and financial exposure, not simply a technical issue,” notes Darin McMullen, Global Head of Product and Claims, Cyber Solutions. “That means mapping industry-specific loss scenarios across the full insurance portfolio to understand where each loss will fall, where gaps remain and how policy wording will respond or can be tailored to respond.”

Aon’s cyber, insurance and industry-level expertise supports organizations in making more informed decisions about where to invest in protection, transfer risk and retain exposure. Learn how Aon can help your organization connect cyber, operational and insurance insights to strengthen resilience before a cyber event disrupts supply chains.

Aon's Thought Leaders

Mani Dhesi
Head of Crisis and Cyber Consulting, Asia Pacific

Jose Harfuch
Specialty Leader, Transportation & Logistics, Latin America

Chris Law
Managing Director, Marine Risk Engineering & Loss Control Practice Lead, United States

Darin McMullen
Global Head of Product and Claims, Cyber Solutions

Duncan Morrison
Cyber Practice Leader, New Zealand

Stephen Rudman
Head of Marine, Asia

Edwin Sabogal Rojas
Cyber Regional Manager, Latin America

Carl Shanks
Director, Cyber Solutions, Europe, the Middle East and Africa

Lee Terwilliger
Logistic Practice Leader, United States

Sergio Torres Bustamante
Specialty Leader, Financial & Professional Services & Cyber, Latin America

Yue Yang
Managing Director, Cyber Solutions, Europe, the Middle East and Africa

General Disclaimer

This document is not intended to address any specific situation or to provide legal, regulatory, financial, or other advice. While care has been taken in the production of this document, Aon does not warrant, represent or guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, completeness or fitness for any purpose of the document or any part of it and can accept no liability for any loss incurred in any way by any person who may rely on it. Any recipient shall be responsible for the use to which it puts this document. This document has been compiled using information available to us up to its date of publication and is subject to any qualifications made in the document.

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