Securing Digital Corridors Under Hybrid Threats: Extending SDAF to Cybersecurity Governance of Critical Maritime Infrastructure in Geopolitical Flux

Maritime ports—now deeply digitalized and interdependent—face escalating cyber risk amid hybrid geopolitical pressures, complex vendor ecosystems, and widening social dependence on uninterrupted trade flows. Situated at the intersection of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, the Caspian Basin exemplifies both the promise of data-driven logistics and the vulnerability of fragmented cybersecurity governance. This study extends the Strategic Data Alignment Framework (SDAF), originally designed to align corporate strategy with data governance, into a cybersecurity governance model for critical maritime infrastructure under hybrid threat conditions. Using comparative policy analysis and benchmarking against contemporary global standards (e.g., NIS2-style obligations, maritime cyber guidelines, and digital trade principles), the study identifies systemic weaknesses in harmonization, institutional capacity, supply-chain assurance, and resilience planning. It reconceptualizes cyber-resilience as a strategic resource and proposes a five-step roadmap combining regional threat-intelligence sharing, vendor risk controls, standards alignment, AI-enabled detection, and stress-tested recovery. The findings underscore urgent needs for coordinated action to safeguard digital corridors and the societies they serve.