The Integrity Gap: Why Know Your Data (KYD™) is the New Frontier of Maritime Intelligence

At a Glance

• KYD™ serves as a proprietary validation layer that ensures all data feeding AI and risk models remains accurate, complete, and resilient against intentional manipulation.
• This framework addresses the critical vulnerability of raw maritime data being rendered untrustworthy by modern tactics like GNSS manipulation, identity tampering, and the rise of zombie vessels.
• By cross-referencing independent signals such as SAR, EO, and RF against historical behavioral baselines, the system verifies the truth before any risk score is generated.
• Know your data provides the data integrity required to expose sneaky actors and deceptive counterparties, ensuring commercial and government decisions are powered by validated truth rather than manipulated signals.

The Foundation of Truth: Elevating Maritime Intelligence Above the Noise

In the global maritime ecosystem, data is the new oil, but “dirty oil” is currently clogging the engines of compliance and national security. For years, the industry has focused on Know Your Customer (KYC) and Windward’s trademarked Know Your Vessel (KYV™). While these are critical, they share a common vulnerability: they are only as good as the information feeding them.

As we enter 2026, the rise of the shadow fleet and sophisticated AIS spoofing has created a reality where the data itself is a weapon. This is why Windward has pioneered Know Your Data (KYD™) – the foundational framework for the next generation of Maritime AI™.

The AI Paradox: Why Advanced Models Fail Without KYD™

Artificial intelligence is often touted as a silver bullet for maritime risk. However, there is a dangerous paradox at play: the more advanced the AI, the more sensitive it is to the quality of its inputs. In computer science, this is known as “Garbage In, Garbage Out” (GIGO). In maritime intelligence, GIGO can lead to a vessel carrying sanctioned oil entering a port undetected or a legitimate trader being blacklisted due to a data glitch.

The Rise of Data Deception

The challenge has shifted from passive data gaps to active data warfare – the intentional manipulation aimed at obscuring reality. Deceptive shipping practices (DSPs) have evolved beyond dark activity. Today’s sophisticated actors utilize digital camouflage to create a false reality in the eyes of regulators and AI models:

1. GNSS manipulation: This is the strategic tampering of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals to broadcast a false location. While often used to hide a vessel’s presence during illicit ship-to-ship transfers in sanctioned zones, its application is broader, allowing vessels to mask prohibited port calls or bypass maritime corridors while appearing to remain in safe, open waters.
2. Identity laundering: Zombie vessels – ships that assume the IMO numbers and identities of scrapped or inactive vessels – enable this behavior. By recycling these “clean” identities, a sanctioned tanker or high-risk asset can adopt a legitimate history, effectively hiding its true origins from automated screening systems.
3. Flag hopping: This tactic involves a vessel rapidly changing its registry, sometimes multiple times in a single year, to exploit administrative lags and jurisdictions with weak oversight. The goal is to create a fragmented paper trail that obscures the true ownership and regulatory accountability of the vessel.

Without a KYD™ framework, an AI model sees these manipulated signals as “truth.” It builds its risk scores on a foundation of lies. Know your data is the process of stripping away these digital masks.

The Three Pillars of Know Your Data (KYD™)

To transform raw maritime signals into actionable intelligence, the KYD™ framework enforces a rigorous validation standard across three critical dimensions:

1. Accuracy: Verifying the Signal

In the maritime domain, accuracy is not just about having the “correct” coordinates – it’s about confirming that the signal matches physical reality. KYD™ validates reported data by seeking independent, non-collaborative corroboration. 

For example, when a vessel broadcasts its position via AIS, the framework triggers a cross-check with Remote Sensing Intelligence, which utilizes synthetic aperture radar (SAR) or electro-optical (EO) imagery. If the satellite imagery confirms a physical hull at those coordinates, the data is trusted. If there is a discrepancy, the signal is flagged as a potential deception event.

2. Completeness: Filling the “Dark” Gaps

Fragmented data is the primary hiding place for illicit activity. KYD™ fuses an expansive array of disparate data streams, including 30+ sources like port logs, corporate registries, radio frequency (RF) signals, and historical “behavioral fingerprints” to build a continuous narrative. This ensures that dark activities are not merely treated as missing information, but are instead analyzed for behavioral anomalies that suggest intentional concealment or unauthorized ship-to-ship transfers.

3. Explainability: The Audit Trail

Intelligence is only as valuable as it is defensible. KYD™ ensures that every insight – from a high-risk score to a sanctioned entity match – is backed by a transparent chain of evidence. Through MAI Expert™, Windward users can see exactly which validated indicators drove a classification. This “glass box” approach gives compliance officers and government agencies the audit-ready transparency required for high-stakes enforcement, commercial litigation, or regulatory reviews.

The Integrated Risk Stack: KYC, KYV™, and KYD™

Understanding how these frameworks interact is essential for operational excellence. While they overlap, they serve distinct roles in the risk stack.

Know Your Data in Action: Commercial and Government Use Cases

For Commercial Trading & Finance: Reducing Friction

A compliance “false positive” can hold up a shipment for days, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in demurrage. Most false positives are the result of “dirty data” – an outdated registry entry or a mismatched vessel name.

KYD™ cleans the data before the screening happens. By ensuring the vessel identity is verified and the movement history is accurate, Windward users see up to ~75% fewer false positives. This allows traders to move with the speed of the market while maintaining a “bulletproof” compliance posture.

For Government & Enforcement: Actionable Intelligence

For a coast guard or border agency, data integrity is a matter of national security. When monitoring Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), agencies need to distinguish between legitimate fishing vessels and bad actors involved in smuggling or illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

KYD™ establishes a trusted operational baseline. By comparing declared movements with remote sensing detections, KYD™ exposes the “digital camouflage” used by illicit actors. This allows agencies to allocate their limited assets toward genuine threats rather than data ghosts.

The 2026 Regulatory Landscape: Why Know Your Data is No Longer Optional

The OFAC April 2025 Advisory and the EU’s 18th Sanctions Package have fundamentally redrawn the lines of responsibility, making it clear that ignorance of a vessel’s digital deception is no longer a valid legal defense.

The recent seizure of the tanker Centuries in the Caribbean serves as a stark warning to the global market. Unlike previous interdictions, the Centuries was not on a sanctions list when it was boarded; the decision to seize the vessel was driven by its behavioral risk indicators, including documented GNSS manipulation and suspicious ship-to-ship transfers.

This shift – from list-based vetting to behavioral interdiction – highlights the “AI Paradox”: if your risk models are fed by spoofed data that haven’t been validated, you are operating with an unmitigated blind spot that now carries major risks.

As we move into 2026, the complexity only intensifies with the EU’s upcoming ban on refined petroleum products derived from Russian crude. Proving that a shipment doesn’t trace back to a sanctioned origin requires the ability to map a complex, multi-stage supply chain across a global fleet that is actively trying to hide its tracks. From the Mediterranean, where Ukraine recently struck the shadow fleet tanker Qendil 2,000 km from its borders, to the Baltic Sea, where Sweden’s detention of the Adler signaled a tightening European net, the message is clear: there is no geographic sanctuary for deceptive data.

In this environment, you cannot detect location tampering or verify a cargo’s origin if you don’t “Know Your Data.” Relying on unverified AIS or static registry snapshots in 2026 is a gamble that commercial and government leaders can no longer afford to take. Know Your Data (KYD™) is the essential filter that turns the chaos of global maritime signals into the clarity of actionable, defensible, and interdiction-proof intelligence.