Security chiefs in transport expect cases of intellectual property theft to be higher than all other sectors this year at 31% (23% global average), explained G4S.
This is a sharp rise on last year at 19%.
“Security in transport is expanding”
Rachelle Loyear, Vice President, Integrated Security Solutions at Allied Universal said: “The high value nature of proprietary transport tech – from EVs to autonomous systems – has made this an attractive sector for state and non-state criminal actors and competitors alike who are looking for advanced IP.”
“Security in transport is expanding from protecting physical property at rest and in motion to protecting the data and trade secrets which keep that complex physical network competitive.”
Insider industrial espionage is expected to spike too, with 29% of companies in transportation reporting this as a top concern, up from 16% last year. This compares with a global average of 20%.
Loyear continued: “This suggests that rapid digital transformation may have created new vulnerabilities that insiders are increasingly likely to identify and exploit in the current economic environment.”
AI-driven threat detection and risk assessment
For the transport sector, cutting-edge security technologies considered the most crucial over the next two years all revolve around AI: AI-driven threat detection and risk assessment (52%), AI-powered video surveillance and analytics (44%) and AI-powered intrusion detection and perimeter security (39%).
AI is already well embedded within the sector and is mainly used in an oversight capacity, for example, to monitor and recommend.
Half of transport companies in the survey report using AI in this way for surveillance and monitoring (50%) followed by 46% for workforce and perimeter tracking – higher than other sectors in both instances.
A quarter of those companies are using autonomous AI – the most sophisticated kind where direct action is taken with minimal human input – for threat detection and risk assessment as well as access control and identity verification (27% and 25% respectively).
World Security Report
These are key findings from the World Security Report, commissioned by Allied Universal and G4S.
2,352 chief security officers (CSOs) in 31 countries at medium and large, global companies with total revenue exceeding $25 trillion took part in the research. 100 CSOs from the transport sector were surveyed.
