Cyber-security will come under the remit of the International Safety Management (ISM) Code from 1st January 2021 and measures must be incorporated into your vessels’ Safety Management Systems – good preparation is vital!
Effective cyber-resilience requires a broad mix of technical countermeasures are brought into play, particularly on vessels where information and operational (IT and OT) systems are highly integrated.
Unused ports, protocols and services should be closed to ensure only appropriate traffic is allowed on the network, or zone of network. Close attention must be paid to the configuration of network devices, such as firewalls, routers and switches, because properly segregated networks can significantly impede an attacker’s access to a ship’s systems.
The fewer communications links and devices in a zone, the more secure the systems and data are in that zone. This can be supplemented by onshore filtering of inbound traffic before it reaches the vessel.
GTMaritime have developed FastNet a new multistream platform to help reduce the number of connections to vessels. FastNet removes the need for VPNs, reducing the attack surface and easing the burden on network configuration. Contact us for more information about FastNet and our security solutions.