Cash-strapped maritime security firms are being forced to use fewer costly elite guards and to diversify into other businesses such as cyber security, as a steep decline in Somali pirate attacks and hotter competition erode fast-thinning margins. Hundreds of security firms sprang up over the past seven years to offer protection to shipping companies, with scores of merchant vessels being boarded and sailors taken hostage in pirate raids off the coast of conflict-torn Somalia. However, attacks in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean have dropped from a peak of 237 in 2011 to just 10 in the first nine months of this year, the lowest since the piracy scourge began in 2008, according to the International Maritime Bureau. The fall has been helped by using armed guards, deploying naval forces and defending ships with barbed wire or fire hoses. The cost of using guards has also halved as the sector has become more competitive, which though good for ship owners is bad for security firms. "Day rates for embarked teams are continuously being squeezed to rock bottom," said retired rear admiral Vasilis Politis, managing director of Greek armed guard company Marine Security International. The price for a security team to protect a ship has slumped from an average of $40,000 per voyage to around $18,000-$20,000, said Gerry Northwood, who previously commanded the British Royal Navy's Counter Piracy Task Group which detained 13 Somalis after an attack on a tanker in 2012. (Reuters)