Vessel owners and operators are increasingly hardening on board networks and protecting their ships from digital threats, spurred on by IMO’s decision to bring cyber-security under the remit of the ISM code from 2022.
Some 5,677 vessels are now employing solutions from GTMaritime’s portfolio – an increase of more than one-third over the past year.
Of note, the deployment of the made-for-maritime anti-virus solution GTSentinel has jumped 23% since September, 2018, with nearly 1,500 vessels now subscribing. Standard antivirus protection software can underperform at sea due to patchy connectivity and bandwidth constraints, often leaving vessels and businesses at risk, the company warned.
GTSentinel was developed specifically by GTMaritime to overcome these failures. It allows fleet IT managers to schedule the distribution of anti-virus updates on a live, daily or weekly basis. Updates need only be sent once to each vessel and then propagated to all on board devices thanks to a serverless distribution mechanism.
When coupled with GTMaritime’s email solution, GTMailPlus, GTSentinel ensures vessels are equipped with the highest level of protection against ransomware, spam, viruses and malware, the company claimed.
In the last six months, GTMaritime has stopped more than 59,500 malware attacks, which were unknown to standard antivirus services and halted more than 68,000 known viruses. They have also prevented more than 200,000 spam messages clogging up on board inboxes.
Mike McNally, who joined GTMaritime last year as Sales & Marketing Director, has now taken on the role of Global Commercial Director, responsible for all sales, marketing, technical sales support and sales operations.
He said: “As the leading independent provider of maritime email we feel a responsibility to continuously enhance the cyber security aspect of our solutions. We have made hundreds of updates and enhancements this year and will continue to do our best to keep ahead of the threat profiles.”
Over the past year, the company has added nine new resellers across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, McNally said.