Securing Satellite Systems
Whether it’s navigating from A to B, doing online banking,
watching television, or calling someone on a mobile phone, more and
more aspects of our daily lives are impacted by information
received from outer Space. In the military and security areas,
reconnaissance, positioning and communications are a fundamental
part of operations both at home and abroad. As a result, protecting
satellites and Space systems, and ensuring the data they produce is
secure, resilient and reliable, is essential.
With this in mind, it’s now time for these data providers to be
considering some key questions in guaranteeing their services – How
reliable is the service? How resilient is the service? How private
or confidential is my information? All these considerations are
important because the threats to a satellite information service
are many and include:
- Having your satellite moved, stolen or used by others
- Corruption or loss of data
- Cyber attack on the Space segment and/or the ground
infrastructure
Understanding the Threat
Addressing this, and delivering ‘assurance’
to the customer that his information is secure, can be done through
a process that starts with an understanding of the threats to the
service.
This threat assessment, combined with vulnerability (or
opportunity for the threat to materialise), leads to a Security
Risk Register, in which the threats are grouped into the following
categories:
- Confidentiality – can someone else read my information, or is
it private to me
- Integrity – does a data package remain unchanged – is it
resilient to accidental damage or attack
- Availability – is the service and information available 24/7,
or at least compliant with the customer requirement.
Some threats will fall into all three categories.
They are then ranked in order of likelihood and impact.
Information assurance procedures propose mitigation of these risks,
which, if applied, will reduce risk to a level that is acceptable
to the customer. Of course, early discussions with customers to
understand their risk appetite will help this stage work more
effectively.
Information Assurance
Pragmatism recognises that it is economically unaffordable and
practically impossible to terminate all risks. The information
assurance process seeks to mitigate risk so that they remain
acceptable to the customer, and both parties can move forward
together with a common understanding.
For the customer, risk appetite is usually established by the
question “how much is my information worth to me?”. This can extend
to addressing the impact of not having the information at all or in
its intended form. In the adversarial scenario, further
consideration may be directed to the ease and/or cost to accessing
the information by other means.
In response to the prioritised risk assessment, information
security-enforcing techniques will be applied. These may
include the use of secure ICT components (often referred to as
‘approved products’) and lockdown of applications and software,
with the application of physical security policy and procedures,
where appropriate.
Examples of responses to loss of confidentiality could include
use of appropriate encryption techniques. Service integrity could
be delivered using defence in-depth with firewalls, anti-virus
services, proxy servers, and protocol manipulation etc.
Assuring
service availability might require hardware diversity,
redundancy and network hardening. All of these form part of the
security architecture – the working design of the complex systems
to meet their intended service goals.
At the other end of the service delivery process, is the
testing
and assurance
that the service functions, as planned. The range of activities
here includes resilience
testing, evaluation, certification, and, if appropriate,
accreditation of secure information systems.
Certification
The ultimate outcome, and the focus of increasing attention, is
to produce a Certificate of Information Assurance which declares
that the satellite-provided service is resilient and fit for
purpose. A certificate from a recognised professional organisation
provides a rapid route to the assurance that customers and the
wider public seek, that services can indeed be relied upon.
With more than three decades’ experience in the Space and
security sectors, VEGA consultants’ understanding of the threats
and counter-measures are crucial in supporting client projects, and
add to the depth of assurance our technical capability provides.
VEGA’s world class experts in information assurance have advised
upon and delivered these information security services, working
with UK Ministry of Defence satellite communication systems at both
strategic and tactical level, and also working with other companies
and organisations who contribute to the UK Critical National
Infrastructure.