Fleet Security: What IT Managers Want: Chapter 1

What IT Managers Want: Chapter 1

At Cydome Security, we know that we can learn the most from listening to seasoned IT managers, CISOs, and CIOs at maritime companies.

See, Map & Fix

In this series of blogs we will share what we learned from the discussions we have had with our clients and the interviews we have conducted with the IT teams who are in charge of its fleet security. 

You have told us that the complex environment is challenging to maintain. Managing multiple vessels (sites) with dynamic infrastructure, which are constantly on the move, without any hands or IT personnel onboard to assist, is an enormous challenge. Without tools that allow cross-fleet management with discovery, monitoring, and assessment, it’s an almost impossible task.

VISIBILITY: “Today, it’s extremely challenging to understand the exact state of each vessel. I want to see the status of everything we have on board and a total overview of the entire fleet.”

Vessels have complex network environments, increased digitization, and a complex mix of both legacy and modern devices, systems, and applications. IT teams have indicated their need to monitor a solution that accurately identifies and tracks all assets connected to the network on board every vessel. This is crucial to better-identifying threats. The key is to have a quick and instant overview of each of the vessels and the fleet as a whole. 

MAPPING: “What should we prioritize? “

You also indicated that you want to know which assets are most vulnerable to cyberattacks and prioritize their protection.

The way to do this is by mapping all assets and conducting a recurring attack simulation on the vessel to better identify their vulnerability and criticality. The process should be conducted automatically to:

  • identify vulnerabilities
  • assess the risk posed by cyber threats: Critical/Medium/ Low
  • determine the impact that a potential attack could have on their operations.

Maritime Cybersecurity Standards

The risk analysis should be conducted according to maritime cybersecurity standards, such as the International Maritime Organization’s cyber security regulations, BIMCO, TMSA3, NIST, and others). As such, the risk assessment should be done effectively and automatically.

MITIGATION: “We want to prevent attacks before they happen.”

You mentioned that simply knowing isn’t enough when it comes to dealing with threats; there need to be clear steps in place for quickly and easily mitigating them. These steps should be simple enough for any member of the IT team to understand and execute. Alerts must come with real-time recommendations for mitigation, as you’ve pointed out—this can make a huge difference.

There must be continuous attack simulation (vulnerability scanning) so that vulnerabilities are reported and mitigated, all to increase the fleet’s cyber security resilience. Learn more about cybersecurity analytics solutions and contact us to learn how Cydome can help you prevent such unknown vulnerabilities with real-time anomaly detection.

Maritime cyber security for IT managers
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