IT Compliance at Sea
Thursday 6, June 2019In the regular world, it’s taken for granted that a simple Windows update can take place across a whole company in just a short space of time. For shipowners, it can take months and sometimes even years to manage just a simple security update across a whole fleet – and then you have to deal with the other updates that are now in the queue too, jeopardising compliance and security for your business.
With more regulations in place, demanding vessels report their fuel and emissions data, being fully IT competent may not seem like the obvious priority. In fact, many shipowners are doing very little and sometimes even nothing at all to protect their IT systems. So why do you need to remain compliant?
• Although the monitoring and reporting of environmental data is important and the collection of this comes from sensors and operational technology, a strong IT network is the core element to get this data where it needs to be
• Organisations such as IMO want everything cyber secure to protect threats against transferring things of value to avoid environment and national cyber-attacks
• The TMSA Guides are there to improve and measure safety regulations for tanker operators. Despite not being mandatory, clients are insisting shipowners adhere to them because their cargo is too valuable
When it comes to compliance, it’s easy to tell shipowners what they should be doing, but how much support is really out there to enable you to do it?
Tore Morten Olsen, President Maritime at Marlink, talked to Nor Shipping TV produced by Tradewinds about IT compliance at Nor Shipping:
In order for us to understand the level of how up to date IT procedures are, we asked the simple question to shipowners about how they update their IT networks with the complication of being out at sea.
These internal studies showed that shipowners who were operating an IT system onboard, tended to fall into four categories. Which are you?
*where you feature on the scale depends on your connectivity systems onboard
Using a fully managed Over The Air (OTA) system that uses automation and scripting to ensure the uploaded files go exactly where they need to go, you can cut out additional manpower and the risk of mistakes.
Marlink offer this fully-managed IT portfolio that monitors onboard networks, maximises cyber security and operation efficiency. ITLINK enables our customers to standardise, simplify and automate their vessel IT environment, enabling fast migration and effective operation of IT services across the fleet and keeping networks online 24/7.
• To ensure availability and compliance, fleetwide computers scan components such as hardware, software, event logs and even printers and routers
• With easy data recovery services, backups can be secured, preventing the loss of vital business data in events of crew error, equipment malfunction, or a cyber-attack
• Marlink’s IT dashboard allows users to oversee in detail the network health status of their entire fleet so that shipowners are always in the loop
We have dedicated technicians with specialised competence in the area of maritime IT, meaning customers benefit from expert delivery and support as well as simplified onboard network management. There’s never been an easier time to be IT compliant. Check out our IT portfolio today.
