SECOM, A New Standard for Secure Communications in Shipping

The International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC, has published a standard: IEC 63173-2 SECOM – Secure Exchange and COMmunication of S-100 based products.

What does it mean in practice? SECOM will mean interoperability, since the goal is to standardize how data is exchanged.

SECOM aims to support all S-100 formats that define what data is exchanged, making it a cornerstone for exchange of maritime information in a secure way.

IEC has published SECOM, a new standard developed from the experiences with the Voyage Information Service within Sea Traffic Management (STM).

SECOM is a standardized interface for transfer of S-100 products, but it can be used for other formats as well. The work started in 2019 and the final version, IEC 63173-2 was published May 30 2022.

STM testbed manager Björn Andreasson said: “Route exchange in the STM Validation project was the starting point.

"However, in the standardization work the scope was expanded from voyage plans and navigational warnings to include exchange of all S-100 based products."

Hannu Peiponen chair of the Maritime navigation and radiocommunication equipment and systems committee at IEC said: “SECOM is an exchange layer that guarantees that different services and software exchange data the same way.

"For manufacturers of maritime systems this eliminates the need to support several different service interfaces for different services and products. If a service or product works with one actor using it, it will work with all.

"This will make it easier to provide valuable end-user services to the maritime community to increase safety and efficiency while at the same time opens a possibility to reduce the environmental footprint."

SECOM, if successful, will be a cornerstone for interoperability of the same magnitude as standard data formats and common authentication methods.