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Viral Impact on Maritime – Connecting Your Remote Workforce Securely

Mark DuPont

COVID-19 has resulted in a global pandemic with cities in lockdown and local, state, and national governments being placed in crisis mode. Now, our cloud-native existence, our connection to the Internet of Things and to operational applications is being stress-tested as workers in many industries are faced with the challenge of working from home. The maritime industry being one of the them, as well as public safety, educational institutions and others.

Here are some questions that you might be asking yourself as this environment and work flow changes right before us:

  • How will we be able to adapt as cloud utilization has increased 10-fold, while sporadically failing, and remote workers multiplying security threats and concerns?

  • Are you having any challenges with rapidly enabling your employees to work from home securely?

  • Are you finding that remote access and employee equipment supplies are constrained or backordered?

  • Is your existing remote access environment unable to support your larger community of remote workers?

Think about all this in the maritime domain.And here is the multi-million dollar question: What if we could create a secure “Zero Trust” network for you in 30 minutes, and at no cost to you from now until July? (“Zero Trust” an information security framework that basically says that

organizations should not trust any entity inside or outside of their perimeter at any time. It provides the visibility and IT controls needed to secure, manage and monitor every device, user, app and network being used to access business data. It also involves on-device detection and remediation of threats.)

The reason a Zero Trust network makes so much sense right now is that hackers are ramping up their activities targeting the distraction of COVID-19, including vendor impersonation and disrupting teleconferences. In a recent Public Service Announcement, the FBI stated “The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spike in businesses teleworking to communicate and share information over the internet,” the PSA reads. “With this knowledge, malicious cyber actors are looking for ways to exploit telework software vulnerabilities in order to obtain sensitive information, eavesdrop on conference calls or virtual meetings, or conduct other malicious activities.” You can read the full report by clicking here.

With an Application Specific Wide Area Network or “AppWAN” Zero Trust network built on the NetFoundry NaaS platform (an NMLEA STAR Provider), your remote workers, as well as suppliers (a frequent target of cyber hackers) are connected directly, only to the applications they require. No more network access, which can be exploited by a hacker once behind your defenses. Instead, your end users are limited to only the applications they require and the access rights can be quickly and easily changed from the NetFoundry dashboard console. Even better, using the NetFoundry dashboard, triggers can be set to automatically alert about activities and actions that fall outside the typical patterns of activities of each end user, and using a standard API, the alerts can be integrated into SEIM applications, and other IT Security platforms.

Want us to create a secure “Zero Trust” network for you in 30 minutes, and at no cost to you from now until July? Contact us at cyber@nmlea.org, and working with NetFoundry and the Cyber Risk Management Group, we’ll help your workforce connect securely.

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The National Maritime Law Enforcement Academy is a non-profit organization, established in the State of Colorado.

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