Increasing need to demonstrate cyber compliance and monitor IT system status sees more shipowners sign-up for shipboard and shoreside management platform

Marlink, the leading provider of smart hybrid network solutions, has reached the 1,000 ship milestone for ITLink Monitor, its solution for simplified IT system monitoring and compliance

Shipowners and managers have shown increasing interest in ITLink in response to IMO2021 regulations, requiring ships to demonstrate procedures for maintaining cyber hygiene as well as much stricter voluntary schemes which require demonstration of KPIs for system patches and updates. ITLink’s popularity stems from its easy adoption; with activation requiring minimal physical intervention onboard the ship and low cost of ownership – the system requires no Capex.

Of the 1,000 ships using ITLink Monitor, 400 have already supplemented it with ITLink’s advanced managed services that provide enhanced cyber security functions, standardise and simplify remote support and maintenance of operating systems and applications from shore. This further reduces the reliance on crew to respond to problems and provides quality assurance that IT systems testing and maintenance is executed by IT experts.

ITLink Monitor provides a remote, fleetwide view of onboard computers and their operating system environment. Hardware, software and operating system status and details are reported onshore in an easy-to-view dashboard, providing complete visibility of IT status across the fleet.

This helps manage compliance-based challenges without the need for additional hardware installation and provides access via a cloud-based health check dashboard of vessel IT devices and software.

The system was introduced by Marlink to provide a simplified way of monitoring KPIs, hardware and software information from onboard PCs and servers. It makes available of information from the vessel to the onshore dashboard and customer access to the dashboard for analysis of the IT environment. Fleet views on multiple data are possible including software and OS performance details as well as a historical view on installed and uninstalled applications and updates.

“ITLink Monitor gives us daily updates on the status of our workstations on board of all our vessels, from disk usage to software status; it covers everything, most importantly it does this automatically and with low data usage, says Madalin Stetcu, Vessel-IT Operator, Hartmann Shipping Services Germany. “From the office ashore, we are able to monitor the status of application updates through the ITLink Dashboard and will know if the applications were updated accordingly on all workstations.”

“ITLink offers clear advantages for shipowners who need to demonstrate compliance and conformance to standards but with an eye to managing cost of ownership and ease of deployment across a large or small fleet,” said Nicolas Furge, President, Digital, Marlink. “As more operators increase the scope of their digital operations, the need for monitoring of the onboard network becomes critical and requires confidence that systems can deliver the required reliability.”