Key Steps to Cyber Security Management

‘Be Cyber Aware at Sea’ campaign issues every month an informative newsletter as part of its efforts to provide the shipping industry with the necessary services to educate organisations on the cyber threat and help them manage and transfer their risk. This month’s issue of the campaign’s official newsletter ‘Phish & Ships’, which has been kindly sponsored by Novae Group,  includes advice on how individuals and organisations should take care to reduce exposure of the cyber risk.

Sharif Gardner, Head of Training at Novae Group shares the basic measures that individuals and organisations should take to reduce exposure:

• Secure the human. Educate end users, managers and executive leaders on understanding the most basic of techniques to prevent incidents in the first place. Train your crew to be the human firewall and identify common online threats such as phishing and email scams.
• Always have up to date anti-virus protection on IT systems and mobile devices, this will filter most of the known threats.
• Always update operating system and application software when instructed to do so by the vendors when
  possible. They have important security updates and bug fixes. This is not always possible when at sea, so it is important that crew are aware of which systems aren’t updated and avoid introducing risks to those systems.
• Restrict access to important IT and OT systems and ensure technical and procedural measures to restrict administrator rights. Only those who ‘need to know’ or be able to change information should be able to do so. This protects the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information.

The campaign has been created to tackle maritime cyber security issues. Providing guidance and raising awareness of cyber threats and risks across the shipping and offshore sectors. Explore more at www.becyberawareatsea.com

Click below to read the Newsletter for February