Bibliometric analysis of maritime cybersecurity: Research status, focus, and perspectives

Maritime cybersecurity has emerged as a critical and rapidly evolving research field, necessitated by the increasing reliance on digital technologies and interconnectivity within the global maritime industry. In this paper, we adopt a bibliometric analysis method to review the existing academic publications pertaining to maritime cybersecurity, aiming to provide a comprehensive overview of the development status and research focus. The results show that: 1) Research on maritime cybersecurity is currently undergoing significant development; 2) Most articles on marine cybersecurity are published by researchers from North America and Europe, with most of them stem from the US, Norway, and UK; 3) Most international collaborations are limited at a regional level, and the major regions include North America and Europe; 4) Five closely related research keyword communities show that maritime cybersecurity research hotspots focus on transport-related cyber-attacks, autonomous vessel, AIS, maritime communication, and UAV. The above thorough examination of the current research on maritime cybersecurity also shows that there are some weaknesses in existing studies. For example, the research topic of maritime cybersecurity has not yet received adequate attention and the research hotspot is relatively concentrated. Based on the findings, we propose perspectives of the research on maritime cybersecurity from the aspects of the effectiveness of regulations, funding and investment opportunities, digitalization in the maritime industry and cybersecurity, advances in maritime communication systems, and unmanned aerial vehicles and maritime cybersecurity.