You can’t defend critical infrastructure from threats you can’t detect
You can’t defend critical infrastructure from threats you can’t detect
Publish Date: 2026-07-15 12:56:00
Source Domain: federalnewsnetwork.com
Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. Ernest Wong A lot of this growth is being driven by what’s called Space 2.0 or the commercialization of space. And we are seeing the dependencies change. So previously it was more position, navigation, timing, which people primarily get through GPS. And just from GPS alone, that depends on most of our 16 sectors. But now with Space 2.0, we’re seeing these dependencies grow into communications like satellite communications as well as Earth observations for anything from agriculture to things like maritime domain awareness. So these dependencies are only going to continue to grow, which means that the importance of cybersecurity and cyber resilience for space systems is also going to grow and something that we need to address. And one of the big challenges we have is recovery. And when it comes to recovery on board satellites, because unlike on the ground, we can’t go in there with a gold disk and just, you know, re-image everything. So there’s a lot of challenges in operating in space. And those are some of the things that we’re trying to mature out more. I’m sure we’ll get into that later.
Eric White Onboard threat detection. That was the key word that I took away from what you guys put out. What exactly does that mean? And how important is it to not just fixing the problem, but finding it in the first place?
Ernest Wong Right. And so detection, when we think about the functions you need for cyber resilience, if you can’t detect the threat, you can really do the other actions after which are response and recovery. And right now, the way cybersecurity is done on space systems is primarily done on the ground through telemetry, and various organizations have demonstrated exploits of attacks that you cannot detect through telemetry. So we have a big gap when it comes to on-orbit detection. So a lot of what we’re doing is to try and develop that body of knowledge to first get at that initial step of on-board detection. And then we can move into things like autonomous response and recovery.]]>
Eric White So tell us about Aerospace SPARTA framework. What exactly is it? And what does it include? And how can the people with satellites up in space actually utilize it?
Ernest Wong So we probably can’t talk about SPARTA framework without first going into what the MITRE ATT&CK framework is, because the aerospace SPARTA framework is basically like the MITRE ATT&CK framework, but for spacecraft and satellites. So for the MITRE ATT&CK for people that are not familiar is a matrix of attack techniques, so TTPs, tactics, techniques, and procedures. For how an attacker might compromise their system. So it has a number of steps from things like reconnaissance to initial access to then lateral movement and then eventually exfiltration or impact to the system. And so it’s very useful to understand how someone might compromise your system so you can know how to defend it. So the Aerospace SPARTA framework is basically like that MITRE ATT&CK, but for space systems. And we’re incorporating a lot of the products that we’re developing into the SPARTA Framework, because that’s something that people in this industry use a lot anyway. And we’re trying to take it beyond just a listing or matrix of attack techniques, but also include things, actual information that you can use to actually defend yourself, like what sort of cyber-threaten indicators you look for when it comes to detection. Or if you are trying to understand how to get started, there’s also a list of prioritized countermeasures that are also on the website for the SPARTA framework.
Eric White We’re speaking here with Ernest Wong with the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate. And, yeah, this is all open to the public, open source. It seems as if it is constantly growing. Is the idea to sort of create a national vulnerability database specifically for space cybersecurity? Or what kind of impact are you looking for this to have across the space industry?
Ernest Wong Sure. And just to be clear, both the MITRE ATT&CK framework and the SPARTA framework are not necessarily data of specific vulnerabilities. They’re a catalog of general techniques that are known. And so it’s not implementation specific. It’s not vulnerability specific. But all these things that we’re trying to do is to try and develop the body of knowledge to enable space cybersecurity for a space system, because it’s a pretty nascent domain right now when it comes on orbit security. So we’re, trying to develop all these. How do you actually detect, like, where do you start with detecting things on board the satellite? And then we’re also working on publishing soon, various prototypes that can help. People understand, or at least look at a reference implementation of how you might take these cyber threat indicators and implement them into actual onboard detectors that you can then integrate into your satellite. And the last thing is the overall goal here is to lower the cost of security and lower the barriers to adoption for industry because what we often hear is that security comes at the cost the mission. They’re trying to make that cost as low as possible by developing all this doing research and the prototyping up front and hopefully that’ll make adoption easier.
Eric White Is that the biggest challenge as well, in actually implementing this kind of stuff? You know, other than what you’re hearing about, hey, this costs a lot, and it may not be worth it for us to send up a piece of new technology if we can’t protect it once it’s up there. Are there other challenges to implementing cybersecurity measures to a growing field of space technology?
Ernest Wong There’s, I think, a couple challenges. The first is, we kind of already alluded to it, is that it’s an ascent field and the body of knowledge is still being developed. So you need all the various cybersecurity researchers and engineers to be basically fleshing this knowledge out, this body of, this pool of knowledge of how do you actually detect, implement, and prove it out through prototyping and things like that. So it’s maturation of cybersecurity for space systems, which is probably the first challenge. But the next biggest challenges, as you’re just saying, it’s adoption because cost and in space in particular, you have a lot of constraints, whether it’s size, weight, power, but also cost. And so it will, I think, improve in time because the hardware is improving. There are various projects to improve compute on board satellites, but there is still always going to be this concern about, well, if you do security, you’re not doing something else. And we’ve seen how that turns out on the ground with all the major cybersecurity hacks we’ve seen, right? And in space, the potential impacts are much, much greater in terms of, you know, if even if it’s inadvertent, if you cause a satellite to lose control and cause a collision, that’ll be a bad day for space, right? So we don’t necessarily want to wait for the impacts to start happening before cybersecurity is implemented on orbit. So we’re trying to deal with that all now. I think part of getting at this is thinking about it from this on-demand perspective. We’re trying to help with the supply portion in terms of being able to develop cybersecurity in a way that is feasible and also at as low a cost as possible. But you also need the various customers and operators to also generate a demand signal to the satellite manufacturers to say, hey, this is important to us. We’d like to see this in the next batch of satellites.
Eric White Are you able to share any of the initial feedback that you’ve received regarding aerospace part of framework? Or is it still too early and folks are still getting a grip on it?]]>
Ernest Wong We’ve already received some pretty good feedback. So the Aerospace SPARTA framework is an Aerospace product that, you know, we didn’t create it. It’s Aerospace’s framework, but we’ve been adding to it with things like indicators of behavior, IOBs, which are the cyber threat indicators, and also those prioritized countermeasures which we published, I think, two or three months ago. But we’ve already seen a number of commercial companies use these products like the IODs. And that basically enabled them to develop commercial security solutions. And so there’s been a number of different companies we’ve engaged with from space system operators to manufacturers, to startups even. So we’re getting some pretty good engagement and it does seem like people are doing some interesting things with these products so far. And so we’re hoping when we put out this open source prototype in next month or a month or two, whenever we publish it, that that’ll also be the next step for companies.Copyright
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