Tag: best practices

During the 2019 SMART4SEA Conference, Isidoros Monogioudis, Senior Security Architect, Digital Shadows, presented the current landscape surrounding maritime cyber threat. In his presentation, he divided the attack surface in two big areas: Threat to maritime vessels and threat to the wider sector.

Over 70% of the respondents of MarTID (Maritime Training Insights Database) survey initiative, World Maritime University (WMU) expect an increase in simulators and e-learning in the coming years. In year 2019, traditional classroom teaching, and simulation training are the most popular training methods for operators, while there has been much debate about whether e-learning in maritime industry works or not. Some believe there is no replacement for hands-on training, others believe there is.

Audits are conducted periodically either by company representatives (internal) or by third parties (external) with the aim to check SMS deficiencies and non-conformities. As non-conformity is considered an observed situation where objective evidence indicates the nonfulfillment of a specified requirement. Additionally, audits take place in case an organization requires an overview with a view to change its initiatives.

Although in all kind of industries, loyalty and dedication from employees is required by leaders, they are said to rarely return their half of the equation, leaving employees feeling left behind and unsupported by ignoring their ideas or even belittling them in public. Here are the 4 types of “bad bosses” that make employees quit organizations.

UK National Cyber Security Centre has issued a paper and an infographic summarizing the key stages of common cyber attacks, in a bid to help individuals and companies to better defend amid the rising cyber threat. The attacker is effectively probing defences for weaknesses that, if exploitable, will take them closer to their ultimate goal. 

There are numerous of questions arising concerning the term “quality”. Most of these questions are focusing on what quality is in practice and who actually defines the required items that make an organization quality compliant. Generally, quality refers to reliability, efficiency and good performance and seeks to reach all stakeholders’ satisfaction, as this is the major factor that defines the requirements on which the organization will finally focus on.

The term “safety maturity” is used by organizations to assess their performance and their capability to maintain an enhanced safety management status. Safety maturity shows the level at which any organization can manage its actions and manipulate its internal procedures, resulting in a better safety performance promoting what is called: safety culture.

Safety culture and safety climate are similar terms describing an organization’s approach to safety, not only the visible efforts or attitudes its members chose to adopt, but also every mental function that defines their overall behavior. In other words, the climate is an item which is easily perceived by others while culture is the basis that lies hidden under the surface.

It has been 20 years since the ISM code became mandatory. Widely known as the ‘International Safety Management Code’, its implementation was a landmark for shipping industry given that for the first time, each shipping organization was obliged to develop an effective safety management.

A PSC inspection resulting to useful case studies and/ or lessons learned for ship operators, aims to pave the way for improvement. The global PSC system includes many different regions (9 MoUs and USCG), facilitating PSCOs to shed their focus on different levels of PSC and sub-standard items all over the world.