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Smart maritime innovation and network security at Damen

Jun 2, 2025

At Damen, they believe that oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers offer humanity an ever-growing range of opportunities in trade, food supply, energy, and recreation. To make the most of these opportunities, Damen develops innovative ships and maritime solutions that contribute to sustainable progress.

Quality, sustainability, and safety are central to this mission — not only at sea, but also on land, within their IT infrastructure. For smart, secure, and controlled network access, Damen uses HPE network components and Aruba ClearPass. This ensures a reliable and efficient network without compromising on security.

“Damen is an internationally operating company with many external partners,” says Peter van Hal, Project Manager at Damen. “A major challenge was that external parties brought their own devices to the shipyards and offices, which often caused disruptions in our network.”

Fabian Klaring, Network Architect at SLTN, explains the technical solution: “Choosing HPE Aruba was an obvious choice. Damen has been working with Aruba switches and Wi-Fi access points for years. Aruba ClearPass integrates seamlessly with the existing infrastructure and offers powerful connections with external systems such as Mobile Device Management, SIEM solutions, and firewalls.”

The implementation of Aruba ClearPass means that Damen can now monitor and manage network access worldwide. Thanks to this zero-trust NAC solution, they can see in real time who is on the network, and only authorized users are granted access.

“In the old situation, we worked with static port configurations. Now, the network automatically adapts to the connected device or user,” Klaring adds.

Network policies are automatically applied, and malicious actors are denied access to sensitive data. This is crucial for Damen — after all, the ships they build often contain sensitive or classified information, which must only be accessible to authorized individuals.

With Aruba ClearPass, Damen now has a future-proof solution that is being rolled out worldwide — in no fewer than 35 countries. This not only keeps their digital infrastructure secure but also lays the foundation for further technological growth and innovation within the company.