Page 33: of Marine News Magazine (April 2022)

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Feature

Electronics cybersecurity service in Spring, 2021 and began partnering with multiple

Sea Machines, in materials describing its SM200, service providers and vendors in its offers a view of the realm of tugboats in the future; effort to offer a suite of managed ser- features described here parallel some of the vices “to deliver effective support to capabilities offered by ABS in its My Digital Fleet.

a wide range of industry sectors, in- cluding power plants, wind farms, oil rigs, platforms to ships, pipelines and industrial manufacturing.” In March, 2022, almost a year after the infamous

Colonial Pipeline cyber-attack, ABS

Consulting issued a warning that said, in part, that “ransomware groups are targeting industrial control systems us- ing increasingly sophisticated attacks.”

Vessel operators can look to the

American Waterways Organization (AWO), a trade organization rep- resenting the inland waterways sec- • Smart marine ecosystems are also being developed. Port operations are tor), which -in a partnership with the becoming more integrated, with tug operations being further interconnected with

USCG issued its “Cyber Risk Man- ship arrivals and departures and shoreside activities. It is envisioned that increasingly agement Best Practices for the Towing automated management of tugs and pilots will become better optimized and

Industry”, in 2018, as the industry integrated with vessel arrivals and departures and terminal and port operations.

was in the earlier days of its Subchap- • The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has helped commercial shipping predict ter M voyage. As the path toward full the failure of machinery and track containers. It may also make its way into the tug compliance moves into its ? nal leg, and towing industry for monitoring conditions, tracking machinery, and optimizing service provider Global Data Systems maintenance. For example, sensors and machine-to-machine communications from tug systems would enable various parameters to be measured and data (GDS), noted that, “The Coast Guard transmitted to a central storage server for analysis. Tug operators can then use mandate for improved safety is driv- the data to gauge machinery performance and predict failures.

ing many tugboat and towboat opera- tors to start maintaining electronic re- cords. This enables them to eliminate the old paper logbooks and tickets, and better communicate and coordi- nate with their shoreside operations.”

In a late 2021 blog entry describing its offerings for the inland sector, GDS said, “Plug-and-play network connec- tivity solutions include layered secu- rity features that help ensure Internet protection, secure remote access, virus protection, email security and more.

We also offer around-the-clock moni- toring and support to ensure continu- ity of operations.” www.marinelink.com MN 33|