IEC 63173-2:2022 the scope of secure communication between ship and shore (SECOM) includes interfaces (APIs) for data exchange (information services), information security measures to enable secure communication and interfaces for service discoverability. SECOM provides technical interoperability, where the same service interface is used for exchanging the information regardless of its operational use, up to the level of exchanging information securely online. Although designed for IHO S-100 based products, SECOM is technically payload agnostic and applicable also for other types of data.
Communication between SECOM information services for data exchange relies on IP based web services. The "last mile" links between a SECOM information service and the end-user application is not defined in this document, thus the communication technology between the vendor API and a ship/shore system can be non-IP based as well as IP based. The informative Annex D describes one such implementation of this. This allows different solutions between the service and shore/ship’s system/applications.
SECOM does not define physical layer or link layer for transport of data between SECOM information services, but requires that the transport supports IP communication. SECOM is applicable for both public (governmental) and private (business) services. SECOM is applicable for ship-shore and shore-ship communication, and can be used for ship-ship communication.