North P&I Club Awarded with Cyber Essential Plus Accreditation

North P&I Club has recently been awarded the government-backed Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation, which is awarded to companies who have successfully implemented systems to protect themselves against common cyber threats.

With constant technical innovation, new dangers are frequently coming to the surface, therefore the Cyber Essentials scheme is designed to improve the resilience of UK businesses to the most common cyber security threats. Cyber Essentials Plus is a more advanced level of assurance and includes an additional internal scan and on-site assessment. The scheme requires companies to implement five key controls: boundary firewalls and internet gateways, secure configuration, access control, malware protection and patch management.

James Holmes, North P&I Club’s Chief Information Officer, commented “The Cyber Essentials Plus accreditation reflects our ongoing commitment to cyber security, and provides our ship-owner members with peace of mind that we take the protection of IT and data facilities seriously.”

With regular reports of high-profile businesses falling victim to cybercrime, it’s the responsibility of every organisation to ensure they are adequately protected. James continued “North is actively promoting awareness and discussion of the importance of cyber security with both staff and our ship owner members – we are doing this through our messaging and cyber security loss prevention initiatives and insights, which have been rolled out both in the UK and overseas.”

Cyber Security – We’re Doing Our Bit – Are You Doing Yours?

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Notes to Editors:

For further information contact: Kim Rogerson on +44 191 232 5221 / kim.rogerson@nepia.com,  or Nick Arthur on +44 1865 514214 / nick.arthur@blue-comms.com

North P&I Club is a leading global marine insurer providing P&I, FD&D, war risks and ancillary insurance to 195 million GT of owned and chartered tonnage. Through its guaranteed subsidiary Sunderland Marine, North is also a leading insurer of fishing vessels, small craft and aquaculture risks. The Standard and Poor’s ‘A’ rated Club is based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK with regional offices and subsidiaries in China (Hong Kong and Shanghai), Greece, Japan, Singapore and Sunderland Marine offices worldwide. North is a leading member of the International Group of P&I Clubs (IG), with over 12% of the IG’s owned tonnage. The 13 IG clubs provide liability cover for approximately 90% of the world’s ocean-going tonnage and, as a member of the IG, North protects and promotes the interests of the international shipping industry. For further information visit: www.nepia.com.

Cyber Essentials is a cyber security certification, published in June 2014 that is backed by the UK Government in collaboration with the industry to promote a standard in cyber security practices across all industries and sectors. Based on five key controls, the scheme is designed to encourage organisations to adopt good security practices to address a number of common threats and minimise risk (even for businesses which aren’t particularly experienced in technology). An official Assurance Framework has been produced to enable organisations to successful obtain the certification by providing relevant guidance in the steps required to implement the appropriate controls to be compliance with the scheme at relatively low cost.

James Holmes, CIO