ABS Chairman, President and CEO Christopher J. Wiernicki addressed the Coast Guard Foundation at the 2016 Pacific Area Awards Dinner in San Francisco on Friday, September 23, as a keynote speaker. Expressing pride in the long, shared history between the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and ABS, Wiernicki recognized USCG leadership in cybersecurity as a regulatory agency and described how cybersecurity has been expanded to a holistic safety approach at ABS.
“In surveying our clients, ABS confirmed that cyber as a safety issue is among their top concerns,” Wiernicki said. “That prompted our expansion of the ABS CyberSafety program, which is the industry’s first risk-based management program with actionable best practice approaches to four key cyber areas, including cybersecurity, automated systems safety, data integrity and software verification.” With this extensive program, he said, “We are defining the absolute value of safety.”
ABS helps organizations build and assess ship-to-shore cyber management capabilities by developing practical guidelines including Guidance Notes, Guides with optional notations, and Advisories to address the issue of cyber threats to ships and offshore assets as well as shore-based facilities. “ABS is continuously focused on the next generation of safety systems that extends well beyond the hardware,” he said.
Wiernicki concluded with a commitment on the part of ABS to continue working with the USCG to help the maritime industry develop cyber resilience and to move cybersecurity and cybersafety forward, calling it a “shared responsibility.”
ABS understands the value in this collaboration, Wiernicki said. “When we work together to secure our systems – whether on land or at sea – the more secure future we’ll see, and the safer we’ll all be.” The clear objective, he said, is a greater degree of safety.