White House Working on Space Cybersecurity Policy

Clashes among nations in the future "will include galactic arenas," and there should be a networked approach when there's a cyberattack on a commercial space operator, said Anjana Rajan, White House assistant national cyber director, Tuesday at a Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center conference. She said there's a need to understand space systems are secured by design and to operationalize best practices for defense against cyberattacks, and, to those ends, her office, the National Security Council and National Space Council are working on an interagency policy. Multiple speakers said space should be declared a critical infrastructure sector. “It should have been done yesterday,” said Samuel Visner, Aerospace Corp. fellow. As space and cybersystems become more interdependent, space will be increasingly sensitive to cyber concerns, he said, and there should be a national R&D initiative for space cybersecurity. Adding functional requirements on operations for security comes at a cost, and that R&D initiative could make cybersecurity more affordable and practical, he said. Being able to anticipate adverse cyber conditions in space means having more space-based sensors and contextual telemetry, said Kassandra Vogel, Blue Origin principal space systems security architect. Withstanding a cyber event is going to require incident response exercises and solutions that inform playbooks that then allow rapid decisions, she said.