To what extent must hardware manufacturers, service providers and others across the satellite ecosystem collaborate to ensure secure cyberspace for their customers? During a panel titled \u201cHow to Achieve End-to-End Protection?\u201d at the 2017 CyberSat Summit, experts agreed that one of the biggest challenges in cybersecurity today is the ongoing transition to an ecosystem where competing companies must cooperate on joint solutions for their shared customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf someone purchases a Boeing<\/strong> [Model] 75 for their own personal use and put a Honeywell<\/strong> system on it for connectivity, and a Satcom Direct<\/strong> router as a backup system, we all have an interest in making that customer secure,\u201d said John Zban, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Satcom Direct. Zban described these interwoven relationships as a \u201cco-ompetition\u201d \u2014 where separate companies will compete for the same customers while also buying or exchanging hardware and information off each other. \u201cRegardless of the competition, we have to make that customer happy,\u201d Zban said.<\/p>\n In-Flight Connectivity (IFC) for airlines exemplifies a vertical that may leverage solutions from multiple companies to serve their customers\u2019 needs. \u201cInstead of using one constellation, there may be one or two or three; instead of one Point of Presence (POP) it may be two or three,\u201d Zban said. \u201cIt requires expertise from all of those different disciplines \u2026 to deliver what the customer needs.\u201d<\/p>\n The crux of the cybersecurity issue, the panelists agreed, is that all nodes within the satellite ecosystem must be resilient. \u201cIf you have a chain and it\u2019s made of titanium, [a] paper link diminishes the strength of the entire chain,\u201d Zban said.<\/p>\n A paradigm for sharing critical cybersecurity information already exists in the form of the Information Sharing and Analysis Center<\/strong> (ISAC). Since 2012, ISAC has featured threat warning and incident reporting capabilities divided by sectors, allowing those operating in aerospace, for example, to share actionable information related to cybersecurity and situational awareness. But the panelists agreed that the organization is not the only and final solution to coordinate efforts across the satellite ecosystem.<\/p>\n Norm Balchunas, senior director of defense\/cybersecurity services and connectivity for Honeywell Aerospace, expressed confidence in Honeywell and other companies\u2019 willingness to share its cybersecurity knowledge with adjacent manufacturers. \u201cI am impressed with the aviation industry and how we\u2019re communicating with each other,\u201d he said. \u201cISAC has to catch up with how we conduct business on a day-to-day basis.\u201d<\/p>\n Bruce Chesley, senior director of strategy for Boeing Space and Missile Systems, said that the conversations around cybersecurity must be both persistent and dynamic. Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and service providers must be flexible and willing to communicate in order to adequately serve the wide range of satellite customers and their different demands. \u201cFor certain satellite customers, the boundaries of the system and the scope of what we deliver varies pretty widely,\u201d Chesley said. The cybersecurity challenge for a mature operator such as Intelsat<\/strong>, for example, is different for other customers for whom Boeing will develop, operate and maintain the entire core network, including the user terminals. \u201cThe edges of the ecosystem that have to be protected is a variable threat surface from a cyber point of view,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As space becomes more democratized, service providers will have to be able to adapt their cybersecurity solutions to a \u201cwider variety\u201d of customers, Chesley said. \u201cCertainly a hobbyist has a different level of cyber [assuredness] that they need to achieve than a global operator like SES<\/strong>,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a one-size-fits-all [solution].\u201d<\/p>\n Chesley added that even now there are companies that will waive certain cybersecurity protections as a matter of cost versus risk. That will likely change as the cyber threat grows more prominent, he said. \u201cWhen that choice is made and those consequences knock on the door, it\u2019s almost evolutionary in a way \u2026 They\u2019re not going to last,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Chesley also echoed comments made earlier in the CyberSat Summit program, which emphasized companies should continue to develop their cyber capabilities without relying on government-enforced standards or regulations.<\/p>\n \u201cAnybody in this audience who thinks the federal government is the answer to the problem has some other problems that we need to address,\u201d commented Greg Touhill, Cyxtera <\/strong>president, during his panel at the summit on Nov. 9.<\/p>\n Ultimately, according to Chesley, it boils down to the slow, bureaucratic nature of government regulation: \u201cThe pace of innovation by the private sector outstrips the government\u2019s ability to legislate it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To what extent must hardware manufacturers, service providers and others across the satellite ecosystem collaborate to ensure secure cyberspace for their customers? During a panel titled \u201cHow to Achieve End-to-End Protection?\u201d at the 2017 CyberSat Summit, experts agreed that one of the biggest challenges in cybersecurity today is the ongoing transition to an ecosystem where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66807"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}