‘Be Cyber Aware at Sea’ campaign issued its monthly official newsletter ‘Phish & Ships’, sponsored by CSO Alliance Maritime, 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 newsletter aims to address a major call on cyber threats, as hacking and ransomware attacks.
In this context, the campaign informs that the UK MCA recently approved the GCHQ maritime cyber security awareness course, an one hour online e-learning course which has been developed by JWC International. The course is available through a web based maritime cyber platform, and provides news updates, posters, videos and cyber risk assessment templates for ship owners and managers, consisting the first of its kind.
Commodore Billson highlighted the importance of accreditation: “This MCSA course has really set the bar in terms of awareness training for seafarers worldwide. With GCHQ approval and UK flag approval acting as two kite marks of excellence and quality assurance for ship owners and crews. Previously the course was a classroom based one day course but after feedback from industry it was clear a much shorter, less technical and basic awareness solution was exactly what was required.”
The campaign also cites some advice to combat ransomware:
- Patching – software providers will release patches, use them
- Control code execution – Change setting to prevent macros from executing.
- User control – Do not let users install software without authorisation.
- Filter web browsing traffic – Use a security appliance or service to proxy your outgoing web browsing traffic.
- Control removable media access – prevent ransomware from being brought in.
- Back it up – Have a backup of your data.
Explore more by reading the full newsletter: