This week's Wednesday Wisdom, an interesting extract from one of PTI's technical papers, comes from Capt. Rahul Khanna, Global Head of Marine Risk Consulting, Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, London, UK.
The technical paper explains how to protect and mitigate against pirates infiltrating a shipping company’s systems and hijacking a vessel to take only the containers with valuable cargo.
Shipping is still a long way from where it needs to be in terms of protection and security. While we as insurers can try to raise awareness and provide insurance solutions, generally the risk is not well understood and the consequences can be disastrous.
All cyber-related incidents will continue to be a problem as long as they are relatively easy to engineer and remain under the radar. One of the best deterrents is active participation in the safety of vessels by ship-owners and crew, themselves.
More awareness training is needed for the crew and the tendency to cost-cut by reducing crew numbers should be avoided. The greatest step any company can take to reduce losses aboard vessels is to improve the crew retention.
That is crucial. Ship operators have to realise that their most valuable asset is the crew which mans the vessel and ultimately protects it.
If we don’t give to the crew proper recognition and support, then we are going to face a greater shortage than we already have. People are as important to the equation as either the flow of data or the flood of new technology that is sure to keep coming at the industry.
Cyber security is this week's Wednesday Wisdom topic as the exponential growth of AI and Automation is the main focus of Port Technology's most recent journal edition.
Even though this new era of technological advancement is just beginning, it won’t be long before these complex systems are taken advantage of by criminals, and it’s better to be safe than sorry.
