SPACEPOLICYONLINE.COM By Marcia Smith 1/23/2020
Private sector and academic institutions involved in commercial space activities are moving forward in establishing a mechanism to share information about cybersecurity threats to satellites and their ground systems. The founding members of the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Space ISAC) are meeting this week in Washington, DC to finalize the mechanics of the organization and meet with government stakeholders.
Space ISAC is the newest addition to the more than two dozen ISACs created since 1999 to facilitate information sharing across the private sector and with the federal government on cyber and physical threats to critical infrastructure. Others include aviation, communications, electricity, financial services, health, information technology, national defense, surface transportation, water, and several in the energy sector.
Space systems are not formally designated as part of the nation’s critical infrastructure, but awareness is growing of how critical they are in everyday life, not to mention military operations. At the urging of the interagency Science & Technology Partnership Forum and the National Space Council, creation of a Space ISAC was announced at last year’s Space Symposium. The effort is spearheaded by Kratos Federal Space whose Senior Vice President, Frank Backes, chairs the Space ISAC Board. He told reporters today that he has been working on this for over two years. Other founding members include a cross-section of companies, universities and non-profits including Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, Parsons Corporation, SES, Purdue University, University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, and MITRE’s National Cybersecurity Center.
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https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/space-cybersecurity-information-sharing-group-moves-forward/
