Dr. Aybars Oruc is the founder of Cyber Onboard. He is also currently working as a Maritime Research Associate in the Maritime Cybersecurity Applied Research, Technology & Education Center (MCARTEC) at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW). His research field is maritime cybersecurity.
Dr. Aybars Oruc has a marine engineering background. After working as a marine engineer on container ships, LPG carriers, and oil tankers, he respectively served as an HSEQ coordinator and superintendent at a shipowner company operating chemical tankers. During this period, he also prepared his master’s thesis on the cybersecurity of tankers. Following the completion of his master’s degree, he resigned from the maritime company and started working as a Research Fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), focusing on maritime cyber security. At NTNU, he pursued his doctoral (Ph.D.) studies on the cybersecurity of the Integrated Navigation System as part of a research project involving private and military stakeholders. After obtaining his Ph.D. degree, he worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Maritime Cyber Security Center at Tallinn University of Technology.
Dr. Aybars Oruc works on maritime cybersecurity across a wide range of areas, including technical and operational aspects, as well as human elements. These areas include, but are not limited to, risk management, training, class, vetting, and regulatory requirements. He has published academic papers in the field of maritime cybersecurity, acted as a co-supervisor for master’s theses, and served on the technical committees of scientific conferences. He was welcomed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to pursue his research endeavours for a month. Dr. Aybars Oruc has delivered numerous seminars on maritime cybersecurity to classification societies, insurance companies, R&D firms, coast guards, and naval forces, in both private and military institutions. In 2022, he was invited as an Invited Speaker to NATO‘s cybersecurity conference (CyCon), where he shared his work with a wide audience. In 2023, his revision suggestions for cybersecurity requirements in the Ship Inspection Report (SIR) Core Questionnaire were accepted by Chemical Distribution Institute (CDI). In 2025, he contributed to the Maritime Cyber Code proposal to the IMO through the Informal Working Group upon the invitation of the Climate Ministry of Estonia.
Below are the scientific publications that Dr. Aybars Oruc has published with his colleagues. Additional papers are currently under review by scientific journals. Furthermore, you can find Dr. Aybars Oruc’s theses, magazine articles, speeches, and interviews.
