Thousands of satellite systems worldwide are at risk of cyber hacking, and industry-wide standards are needed to help boost security and mitigate the risk of attack.
That was the message delivered by SRT Wireless CTO Conrad Smith during a panel discussion Monday at the Satellite 2015 conference in Washington, DC. Smith joined executives from Intelsat, ViaSat and ND SatCom for a discussion of “Cyber-Security: Securing IP Networks While Enhancing Performance.” The panel, moderated by Cisco’s Rakesh Bharania, focused on common vulnerabilities in satellite communications, best practices for mitigating risk, and the need for an industry consensus on building cyber security functions into satcomms.
Such an industry standard is currently being developed by the Global VSAT Forum’s Cyber-security Task Force, a group chaired by Cisco’s Bharania. While the task force has already issued a “product security baseline” detailing best practices, it has yet to achieve industry-wide adoption.
The panelists unanimously agreed that virtually all cyber vulnerabilities can be mitigated with time and money, but the challenge is in balancing optimal security levels versus increased cost.
Ultimately, said Smith, such baked-in “cyber-hardening” of terminals will represent a competitive advantage for vendors such as SRT who provide it.
Smith detailed five different classifications of attacks against satellite communications networks, including hard-coded credentials that enable easy access. In addition, said, Smith, “If you get firmware updates from the Internet, it’s really easy to hide some malicious code in there.”
Another challenge, noted Smith, is that customers don’t always know what they need. Thus, it is up to the terminal vendors to help educate and guide customers as to the appropriate levels of cyber-security.
SRT was honored to share the stage with industry luminaries and will continue to participate in the global dialogue about satellite cyber-security.
