Communication is Common Ground at CITIS

At the Communications & IT in Shipping (CITIS) conference at Inmarsat’s Headquarters in London, Telaurus Communications emphasized the importance of communication in the recently passed ISPS Code to a group of delegates largely unaware of its ramifications. A survey of the group showed that 78 percent of those attending knew little of the implications of the legislation. With the compliance date just 16 months away the conference was left in no doubt regarding the urgency of the issues. The Telaurus presentation identified five aspects of the legislation where communication was vital to its implementation and effectiveness. Those areas were Crew Calling, Security Planning, Training, AIS & other surveillance technologies and Crisis and Emergency Response. Telaurus’ Senior Vice-president of sales and marketing, Trevor Whitworth, told the conference that the contrasting attitudes of owner/operators towards Crew Calling placed this issue in contention. “Crew Calling represents both a challenge and an opportunity to operators” he stated, “denying the crew private and affordable communication facilities did not prevent them from communicating” “while a happy crew were potentially part of a security solution” he proclaimed. Trevor Whitworth explained, “Telaurus provides a comprehensive crew calling and email solution that is based upon either pre-paid scratch-cards or credit card payments allowing operators to shed the administrative cost and burden. Crew-members can be allowed total freedom of use to send and receive emails whenever and to/ from wherever he or she desires. However in this security conscious era and at the request of some of our customers we have enabled an “approval” function, where crew members have to have their messages approved by the Ship’s master/Security Officer before they can be sent or received.” “Of course a vital area of security in this day and age, relates to virtual piracy” continued Whitworth as he described how all messages sent to and from ships were handled by Telaurus’ secure data centre in New Jersey. The facility has firewall protection and up-to-the-minute virus protection software updated daily to ensure that the ships PC systems are unlikely to be disabled by virus attacks. He stated that this security system had trapped a number of virus infected messages and that none had been transmitted to any of the ships currently using our Telaurus Global Network. “In addition” commented Whitworth, “All messages sent over the satellite link are encrypted to 3DES standard, ensuring their security is maintained. If security is of critical importance to a ship owner, we can further offer a secure VPN link between his offices and our data centre.” Telaurus outlined application specific solutions for the other areas of the Code pointing out that with the risk assessment/management aspect of the ISPS process each Ship, Port and Company represented a unique situation. However, the clarion call from Trevor Whitworth to owner/operators was “The sand is running through the glass – Start the process now, its later than you think!