IT Support for Maritime & Logistics Companies in Houston
Maritime IT services in Houston cover Ship Channel terminal networks, IT and OT segmentation, EDI and dispatch uptime, and Coast Guard cybersecurity readiness under 33 CFR Part 101 Subpart F. Uprite runs it from two Houston offices at $138 per user per month, published rather than quoted.
SOC 2 Type 1 certified IT for Ship Channel terminals, marine services firms, freight forwarders, drayage carriers, and warehouse operators. Built for maritime and logistics companies that move cargo on a clock nobody controls.
Speak to a Maritime IT ExpertNo obligation. We map every terminal network, OT segment, and data exchange you have running.In Texas Since 1999 | MSP 501 Winner 7 Years Running | SOC 2 Type 1 | 120-Day Satisfaction Guarantee
Speak to a Maritime IT Expert
Recognized Across Texas for Maritime, Port, and Logistics IT
The Compliance Reality
The Coast Guard Rule Reaches Companies It Does Not Regulate
Ask a Houston freight forwarder whether the Coast Guard cyber rule applies to them.
Almost always the answer is no. It is also correct. 33 CFR Part 101 Subpart F applies to owners and operators of U.S.-flagged vessels, facilities, and Outer Continental Shelf facilities that already carry a security plan under Parts 104, 105, and 106. A fifteen-person forwarder in Pasadena is none of those things.
Then read Section 101.650(f). A covered operator has to establish a process through which all IT and OT vendors or service providers notify it of vulnerabilities or reportable cyber incidents without delay. It also has to monitor and document every third-party remote connection into its environment.
You are the third party.
The obligation arrives as a contract clause instead of a regulation. A terminal on the Houston Ship Channel cannot certify its own supply chain without pushing that requirement down the wire to the forwarder, the drayage carrier, the 3PL, the warehouse, and the customs broker. None are covered entities. All get the questionnaire.
Generic IT misses this. Every time.
So the real question is not whether a regulator names you. It is whether you can answer a terminal in the week the questionnaire lands, with documentation rather than assurances. The statewide view of the vertical sits on our maritime and logistics IT services page.
By the Numbers
The Numbers Behind Maritime IT in Houston
Three of these come from the port and the rulebook. Two are ours, printed here rather than quoted after a call.
TEUs through Port Houston in 2025, a record and a 4 percent gain, alongside 54.5 million short tons of total cargo.
July 16, 2027
Deadline for every covered facility and U.S.-flagged vessel to submit a Cybersecurity Plan to the Coast Guard, under 33 CFR 101.655.
Jan 12, 2026
Deadline that has already passed for cybersecurity training of every employee and contract worker with IT or OT access, under 33 CFR 101.650(d)(4).
Freight arrangement establishments in Harris County, averaging 14.9 people each against a countywide average of 17.8.
$138
Per user per month for fully managed IT, published on this page instead of quoted after a discovery call.
| Metric | Data Point | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Port Houston container volume, 2025 | 4,303,345 TEUs, up 4 percent | Port Houston, February 2026 |
| Port Houston total tonnage, 2025 | 54,491,066 short tons, up 3 percent | Port Houston, February 2026 |
| Facilities along the Houston Ship Channel | 8 public terminals, more than 200 private | Martin Associates for Port Houston, 2026 |
| Cybersecurity Plan submission deadline | July 16, 2027 | 33 CFR 101.655 |
| Cybersecurity Assessment deadline | July 16, 2027, then annually | 33 CFR 101.650(e)(1) |
| Personnel cybersecurity training deadline | January 12, 2026, then annually | 33 CFR 101.650(d)(4) |
| Cybersecurity drills required | At least twice each calendar year | 33 CFR 101.635(b) |
| Notification window after a CySO change | 96 hours | 33 CFR 101.630(e)(4) |
| Water transportation establishments, Harris County | 88, employing 3,411 | BLS QCEW, 2025 annual average |
| Marine cargo handling establishments, Harris County | 35, employing 8,097 | BLS QCEW, 2025 annual average |
| Freight arrangement establishments, Harris County | 590, employing 8,812 | BLS QCEW, 2025 annual average |
| Warehousing and storage establishments, Harris County | 395, up 10.3 percent year over year | BLS QCEW, 2025 annual average |
| Uprite published starting price | $138 per user/month | Uprite Services |
Terminal, Yard, and Office
Cargo Moves on Three Networks, Not One
The office network is the easy one. Everybody secures that.
Behind it sits operational technology: gates, scales, cranes, reefer monitoring, tank gauging, yard automation, and the vendor laptops that service all of it. Behind that sits the exchange layer, the electronic data interchange and API traffic that tells a customer, a carrier, a broker, and Customs the same thing at the same moment. Most Houston operators run all three and can only name an owner for the first.
Subpart F closed that gap for covered facilities. Section 101.650(h) requires segmentation between IT and OT networks and requires every connection between them to be logged and monitored. Section 101.650(b) requires an approved list of hardware, firmware, and software, an accurate inventory of network-connected systems, and a documented network map. None of it is exotic. It is just undocumented.
What We Support Across a Houston Freight Operation
Terminal and Yard Operating Systems
Whether your facility runs Navis N4, Tideworks, or something built in house, we run the environment underneath it: servers, workstations, handheld fleets, gate and scale interfaces, and the network paths that keep a truck moving through a lane instead of parked in it. Lane time is the metric.
Transportation and Warehouse Management
McLeod, Trimble, CargoWise, Magaya, Descartes, and the warehouse platforms beside them. We handle identity, workstation and scanner performance, dock and gate printing, and the integrations that carry status back to a customer.
Data Exchange That Gets Watched
Load tender, shipment status, ocean status, and terminal activity traffic, monitored as a service rather than assumed to be running. A silent exchange failure does not page anybody. It just stops. The customer tells you.
IT and OT Segmentation
A documented boundary between business systems and operational technology, with every crossing logged and monitored. That is what Section 101.650(h) asks for, and it is the item most likely to be missing when an inspector asks.
Identity Across a Rotating Workforce
Named accounts, multifactor authentication, and least privilege across email, the operating platform, and remote access, with credentials revoked the day somebody leaves rather than the quarter after. Section 101.650(a) makes each of those a written requirement.
Storm Continuity on the Gulf Coast
Dispatch, documentation, and customer communication planned to keep running while a facility is dark, through our Houston disaster recovery services. A vessel schedule and a hurricane have never once negotiated.
One question separates a real maritime provider from a hopeful one.
Ask how they would log and monitor the link between your business network and the gate system at a facility they have never walked. Somebody who works in this industry answers with a design and a place the logs land. Somebody who does not answers with a firewall brand. We put that question to the whole Houston field and published the answers in our scored ranking of Ship Channel and port logistics IT providers.
That design is the product.
Records and Audits
The Cybersecurity Plan Is an Operating Document, Not a Filing
Most operators read July 2027 as a paperwork date.
It is not. A plan approved under Section 101.630 is valid for five years, and an audit of the plan and its implementation has to run every year, beginning no later than one year after approval. The person doing that internal audit cannot hold regularly assigned cybersecurity duties for the facility being audited, and has to be independent of the measures under review.
Read that twice. It matters a great deal if one person was going to write the plan and then audit it.
The plan also has to survive ordinary business events. A change of owner or operator requires an amendment within 96 hours. A change of Cybersecurity Officer requires notice to the Coast Guard within 96 hours and an amended plan submitted inside the same window. Four days. Weekends included. The older Part 105 obligations sitting underneath that plan are covered in the USCG maritime cyber rules Texas operators keep missing.
Drills run at least twice a calendar year. A full exercise runs at least once a calendar year, with no more than eighteen months between them. Records of training, drills, exercises, threats, reportable incidents, and audits all have to exist and be retrievable on request.
None of that is IT work in the traditional sense. All fail the same way. The evidence exists somewhere and nobody can produce it inside the window.
Uprite holds SOC 2 Type 1 certification, which means an independent auditor has examined our controls against the Trust Services Criteria for security and availability rather than taking our word for it, and the report goes to any terminal, carrier, or insurer that asks for it under an NDA.
What That Looks Like at a Houston Facility
A Cybersecurity Officer Who Is Reachable
Section 101.620 requires a CySO designated in writing by name and title and accessible to the Coast Guard 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We staff the coverage behind that name so the role is not one person and one cell phone.
An Evidence Trail That Gets Produced
Training records, drill and exercise logs, audit reports, and incident documentation kept where somebody can retrieve one specific item during an inspection instead of the week after it.
Known Exploited Vulnerabilities, Closed
Subpart F requires patching or documented compensating controls for every known exploited vulnerability in a critical IT or OT system, without delay. We track the CISA catalog against your actual inventory rather than a generic list.
Vendor Notification, Written Down
The process through which your own IT and OT vendors report vulnerabilities and incidents to you, documented, along with monitoring and documentation of every third-party remote connection into the environment.
Backups That Get Tested
Immutable backup of critical IT and OT systems, protected and tested on a schedule, because the resilience paragraph asks for tested backups and not for a backup job that reports green. Green is not proof.
Penetration Testing Tied to Renewal
A penetration test completed in conjunction with plan renewal, with the certifying letter and every identified vulnerability documented in the facility security assessment where an inspector will look for it.
One pattern shows up in nearly every assessment we run. The operator assumes the terminal platform vendor covers this. The vendor covers the application. Nobody has written down who covers the network it sits on, the accounts that reach it, or the connection between it and the gate. Our Houston managed security services exist for exactly that gap.
The Risk
Houston Already Had the Warning Shot
Somebody already tried this here. In August 2021 the target was Port Houston.
A suspected state-sponsored group used a zero-day in Zoho ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus, tracked as CVE-2021-40539, to reach the port network. The director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency disclosed the attempt to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Port Houston stated that no operational data or systems were impacted.
Look where they came in. Not a crane. Not a gate controller. A password self-service appliance sitting on the identity layer, which is exactly the kind of system that gets installed once and then belongs to nobody in particular.
That is the shape of it on this coast. Attackers skip the water. They start at the accounts.
The statewide technical detail lives on our Houston cybersecurity services page. Here is what it means at a terminal, a yard, and a broker’s office.
Identity Before Equipment
Multifactor authentication and conditional access across email, the operating platform, and remote access, with a departure checklist that runs the same day. Section 101.650(a)(7) makes credential revocation on departure a written requirement, not an intention.
Remote Access With a Named Owner
Every vendor tunnel into a scale, a gauge, a reefer monitor, or a terminal system recorded, justified, and monitored, because Subpart F requires a documented justification for any remotely accessible OT system and forbids exposing one to the open internet without it.
Booking and Payment Fraud Controls
Email authentication plus a written callback rule for any change to banking details, booking instructions, or release authority. Confirmed on a number you already had, never the one printed in the message.
Detection That Reaches the Yard
A 24/7 security operations center covering endpoints, mailboxes, and the site edge, because a gate house switch is a company device even when it lives inside a fence line and nobody has logged into it since 2019.
Tell us where your cargo data actually moves.
We will map the terminals, the OT segments, and the data exchanges before you commit to anything.
Speak to a Maritime IT ExpertDefinition
Maritime and Logistics IT Services in Houston, Defined
Three Things That Set Uprite Apart for Houston Freight
Four Delivery Models, Not One
Fully managed, remote managed, co-managed alongside the person you already employ, or security and vCISO coverage layered onto the IT you keep. The model gets chosen per company rather than assumed at the first meeting.
Published Pricing, No Discovery Call Required
$138 per user per month fully managed, $100 co-managed, and $40 for security augmentation, with a year-one rate lock and no fees that surface in month three.
Two Houston Offices, Engineers Who Drive
One at 5718 Westheimer Road near the Galleria and one at 16441 Space Center Boulevard in southeast Houston, which puts an engineer inside driving distance of Pasadena, Deer Park, La Porte, Baytown, and the Bayport and Barbours Cut terminals.
Getting Started
How We Onboard a Houston Maritime or Logistics Company
The order is deliberate. Nothing early in it touches a gate, a scale, or a dispatch board during a vessel window.
Step 1. Map Every Network, Including the Ones Nobody Owns
Terminals, yards, gate houses, warehouses, offices, and the vendor-installed equipment sitting on each of them, plus where cargo data lands and which links carry it. That inventory and network map is what Subpart F asks for, and almost nobody has one that is current. Almost nobody does. The vessel to shore connectivity half of it is the part that moves.
Step 2. Draw the IT and OT Boundary
We document where business systems end and operational technology begins, then get every crossing logged and monitored to somewhere a human actually reads. It is also the item most likely to be missing. Inspectors ask early.
Step 3. Fix Identity and Remote Access First
Multifactor authentication, named accounts, least privilege, and a full inventory of vendor tunnels go in ahead of hardware, because that is the path the Port Houston attempt took and the path most of them take.
Step 4. Standardize the Site Build
One repeatable build per facility: managed firewall, segmented wireless, enrolled devices, logging with a destination, and cellular failover for the day a circuit drops and a lane backs up onto the road. Site two is a checklist.
Step 5. Run It and Prove It
Around-the-clock monitoring, a help desk that answers a dispatcher as fast as it answers the controller, restore testing on a schedule, and documentation current enough to hand to an auditor, a customer, or a Coast Guard inspector who has already decided to look closely at this one.
A single-site operator usually clears the first three steps in four to six weeks. Multi-terminal operators and anyone running twenty-year-old operational technology take longer, and we say so before you sign rather than during month two.
Honest Fit Check
Who This Is Built For
| Right fit |
|---|
| Houston Ship Channel terminals, marine services firms, freight forwarders, customs brokers, drayage carriers, and 3PLs with 15 to 300 users |
| Operators covered by 33 CFR Parts 104, 105, or 106 who owe the Coast Guard a Cybersecurity Plan by July 16, 2027 |
| Companies outside the rule that sit in a covered facility’s supply chain and are now asked to prove their own controls |
| Anyone whose gate, scale, dispatch, or data exchange traffic still shares a flat network with the office printer |
Nobody wins from a signature that should not have happened. If none of this describes your company, say so on the first call and we will point you somewhere better.
Before You Switch
What Actually Stops Freight Companies From Switching
Four objections come up in nearly every first conversation. Straight answers below.
“Our terminal system vendor handles security.”
They handle the application, and your own agreement says so. Nobody outside your company runs your identity, your site networks, your workstations, your handheld fleet, your vendor tunnels, or the boundary between the business network and the gate. That is the way in.
“We run 24 hours. There is no window to change anything.”
Then nothing that stops a gate goes first. Identity, monitoring, backup, and device enrollment all deploy while cargo keeps moving. Anything touching an operational segment gets scheduled against your vessel and gate windows, with a rollback written before the work starts.
“We are not regulated, so none of this applies to us.”
The rule misses you. Your customer’s contract will not. A covered facility has to document how its vendors report vulnerabilities and has to monitor every third-party remote connection, so the questionnaire lands on your desk either way. Answering it well is a commercial advantage right now, while most of your competitors still cannot.
“We already have an IT person who knows the operation.”
Keep them. Co-managed IT in Houston at $100 per user per month adds monitoring, a security operations center, and after-hours coverage, so your person stops being the only human who can answer at two in the morning when a gate system stops responding.
What Clients Say
Hector and Kareem are super helpful! They are always willing to take on my computer problems even if its small. I had my mouse disappear off my screen, it was an user issue but Hector didn't make me feel small or "dumb" for this error. We love uprite!
I had been having trouble with an IT matter that I didn't think would be fixed but Arvin Ebueng from Upright took his time with me and worked with me until we were able to resolve the issue. The issue was an internal issue with the way the program was written, but Arvin came up with a great work around so that I am now able to do what I need to do at my job. Long story short, he got me access to both things that I need access to simultaneously and daily. Thanks 😊 Arvin, you are much appreciated 👏 💐 🥳.
I'm am not a "tech" person, however the team at Uprite gets me through the technological side of computers and software so that I can function on a daily basis... but the most enduring quality is that they care. Special shoot out to Mary, Sergio, Eufemio, Hector, and Jeff just to name a few... I appreciate each of you and the help you give me.
Uprite has been one of the best services the company I work with has provided for us they help us with any issues we run into and are always easy to work with, and very patient with us and friendly.
Sergio Rios is a rock star. I spent about 2 hours trying to fix a problem myself, then called him, and in under 3 minutes my issue was resolved. I highly recommend Uprite, and especially Sergio.
FAQ
What Houston Freight Operators Ask First
They cover terminal and yard networks, IT and OT segmentation, identity and device management, support for the environment around terminal, transportation, and warehouse platforms, data exchange monitoring, cybersecurity, backup, and Coast Guard readiness under 33 CFR Part 101 Subpart F. Pricing starts at $138 per user per month. The work gets organized around cargo flow rather than around an office, because a Houston freight operation loses money at a stopped gate long before it loses money at a stopped inbox.
Only if you own or operate a U.S.-flagged vessel, a facility, or an Outer Continental Shelf facility that already needs a security plan under 33 CFR Parts 104, 105, or 106. Most forwarders, brokers, drayage carriers, and warehouse operators sit outside it. The requirement still reaches them by contract, because Section 101.650(f) makes covered operators document how vendors report vulnerabilities and monitor every third-party remote connection into their environment.
Cybersecurity Plans are due to the Coast Guard by July 16, 2027, and the Cybersecurity Assessment carries the same date and then repeats annually. One deadline has already passed. All employees and contract staff with access to IT or OT systems had to complete cybersecurity training by January 12, 2026, and annually after that, which is the requirement most operators discover late.
Uprite publishes $138 per user per month for fully managed IT, $100 per user per month co-managed alongside your own IT person, and $40 per user per month for security augmentation. Operators with terminals or yards should budget separately for site network hardware, which is quoted per location because a gate house and a corporate suite are not the same build. Rates are locked for the first year.
Yes, though not in the way most buyers assume. We run the environment around them: identity and single sign-on, workstation and handheld performance, network paths, printing at the dock and the gate, integrations, and the electronic data interchange traffic that carries status to customers and to Customs. That holds whether you run Navis, Tideworks, McLeod, Trimble, CargoWise, Magaya, Descartes, or a system somebody built in house fifteen years ago.
Dispatch, documentation, and customer communication keep running, because they do not depend on hardware sitting at any one facility. We plan failover, remote access, and data protection per site, then coordinate recovery from our two Houston offices. The restoration order gets agreed with you in advance, in calm weather, rather than argued about while a storm is sitting over the channel.
Start Here
Find Out What Your Cargo Data Actually Runs On
Almost every assessment we run at a Houston freight operation turns up something nobody was tracking. A gate switch sitting on the office network. A vendor tunnel into a tank gauge owned by a company that was acquired in 2019. A data exchange job that has been failing quietly since March.
The assessment starts with the map. We inventory every network, every account, every crossing between business and operational systems, and every vendor connection, then show you what is exposed, what is genuinely unrecoverable, and where you stand against the Subpart F items a customer or an inspector will ask about.
It takes about a week. It costs nothing.
Nobody will ask whether your provider understood the rule. They will ask to see the plan.
Prefer the phone? Our Houston office answers at (281) 956-2280.
