Critical Infrastructure Security Goes to Space: Leveraging Lessons Learned on the Ground

TL;DR

This paper explores how cybersecurity lessons from ground-based industrial control systems can inform the protection of space systems, emphasizing shared vulnerabilities and defense strategies for critical infrastructure.

Contribution

It identifies commonalities between ICS and space systems, and offers insights and recommendations for applying cybersecurity practices across both domains.

Findings

ICS cybersecurity lessons are applicable to space systems.

Shared vulnerabilities exist between ground and space critical infrastructures.

Recommendations for future research in space cybersecurity.

Abstract

Space systems enable essential communications, navigation, imaging and sensing for a variety of domains, including agriculture, commerce, transportation, and emergency operations by first responders. Protecting the cybersecurity of these critical infrastructure systems is essential. While the space environment brings unique constraints to managing cybersecurity risks, lessons learned about risks and effective defenses in other critical infrastructure domains can help us to design effective defenses for space systems. In particular, discoveries regarding cybersecurity for industrial control systems (ICS) for energy, manufacturing, transportation, and the consumer and industrial Internet of Things (IoT) offer insights into cybersecurity for the space domain. This paper provides an overview of ICS and space system commonalities, lessons learned about cybersecurity for ICS that can be applied to space systems, and recommendations for future research and development to secure increasingly critical space systems.