In the afternoon of November 10, DP World, one of the world’s biggest port operators, was forced to disconnect its IT system from the internet at all of its port terminals in Australia, disrupting operations at the country’s major seaports in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Fremantle. The shutdown was initiated after the operator detected an unspecified intrusion into its systems on November 10. The stoppage mainly affected landside operations, with vessels still able to load and unload containers at ports, while trucks were unable to enter or exit port facilities to pick up or drop off goods after systems used to share data between trucks and the terminal operator were shut down, leaving thousands of containers stranded in port yards.
By 09:00 local time on November 13 (22:00 GMT on November 12) DP World confirmed that operations at all four affected ports resumed after successfully concluding tests of key systems during the previous night. However, the operator warned that an investigation into the incident was still ongoing and that intermittent operational disruptions were likely to continue in the coming days as port workers work to clear the backlog.
While no timeline has been given on how long it will take to work through the backlog, the process could take days or even weeks at some terminals as an estimated 30,000 containers accumulated by the time DP World was able to resume operations on Monday, November 10.
Significant backlog at several of Australia’s major seaports
DP World is just one of a handful of operators in the country, but processes roughly 40% of all cargo moving into and out of Australia’s ports. The port terminals operated by companies Patrick Terminals and Hutchison Ports were reportedly not affected by the cyber incident and continued operating over the last couple of days. In total, around 98% of the country’s trade is handled by sea, according to Ports Australia, an industry body representing Australia’s port authorities and corporations.
During the shutdown, DP World worked with government authorities and private sector stakeholders to identify and retrieve sensitive inbound freight that was stuck at its terminals due to the sudden system stoppage, and collaborated with some of the other ports and terminal operators to keep a limited amount of freight moving.
While the operator expected to move around 5,000 containers out of its yards on the day it resumed services, that only represented around 17% of all affected containers, and landside operations remained limited at several port terminals. While port workers in Brisbane, Queensland, and Fremantle, Western Australia, started to work through import as well as export containers, port workers in Sydney, New South Wales, and in Melbourne, Victoria, were only tackling import containers as of November 13. According to a representative of the Freight & Trade Alliance, an advocacy group, it may take another two weeks until DP World will again accept export cargo at its port in Sydney.
Ongoing port strike likely to disrupt DP World’s recovery efforts
While some industry representatives voiced the hope that the impact of the temporary outage may not be excessively disruptive after terminal operations restarted, the port operator could face additional delays in clearing the backlog due to an ongoing labor dispute by the Maritime Union of Australia, which had been impacting operations at Australia’s ports even before DP World was forced to shut down its IT system last week.
The dispute with the Maritime Union of Australia has involved a series of intermittent work stoppages and temporary bans on the loading and unloading of trucks since it started in October, which caused more than a week of delays for vessels calling at some Australian ports. In response, some vessel operators started skipping particularly affected ports or diverted ships to other ports to avoid local delays. As of November 14, the strike was extended until at least November 20, with another round of rolling stoppages confirmed to go ahead despite the container backlog that accumulated at DP World’s terminals. Some sources suggest that DP World may choose to subcontract work to other port operators such as Patrick Terminals to address the cyber-related backlog as port workers continue their strike action, but the extent of such an agreement remains unclear.
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