Cybersecurity Risk Assessment for Safety-Critical Systems

When you consider critical infrastructure, we rarely consider the enabling technology and systems that realize such infrastructure; such as, agribusiness' reliance on weather and climate satellites, the U.S. military's reliance on intelligence satellites, and various transportation industries' reliance on global positioning system (GPS) satellites. Most of the world's critical infrastructure relies on space systems. Despite efforts to improve the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure, there has been little focus on cybersecurity for space systems. Challenges to secure space systems included technology development, ownership, and management perspective. This leads to the lack of guidance in the form of standards that govern space system security and, ultimately, policies that enforce these standards.

This presentation first discusses the recent major cybersecurity threats to space systems, and the potential motivations for cybercriminals or nation states would be interested in compromising space systems. Next, we discuss the various perspectives required to secure space systems. The majority of the presentation describes a Honeywell technique for assessing security risks for safety-critical systems like space systems. We conclude with a discussion of possible next steps in advancing cybersecurity for space systems.

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