Jerry Petersen
Organizations should strive to bolster the security of satellite ground stations, according to Xage Security Government President and General Manager Matthew Heideman.
Ground stations are now at greater cybersecurity risk because they need to be connected to a broader network or even the internet in order to facilitate data sharing and remote access, Heideman said in a column SpaceNews published Tuesday.
To make matters worse, ground stations “tend to stick around for a long time” and so are powered by deprecated operating systems that no longer receive security patches and other forms of support.
To mitigate these risks, Heideman recommends that organizations enforce just enough, just in time access while observing zero-trust principles. These would provide ground stations with security while allowing for increased interconnectivity.
Organizations should also use what Heideman described as an “overlay” that would make it possible to implement modern access management on assets that cannot accommodate such measures on their own.
The Xage Security Government executive also proposes the use of a distributed password vault, which would make it more difficult for attackers to compromise user credentials.
Finally, in the case of hybrid satellite architectures, which involves the interoperation of public and private satellites, zero-trust data exchanges is key, Heideman said.
