The federal government has designated 16 sectors as “critical infrastructure,” from financial services to energy, food and agriculture, and the defense industrial base. That means “incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.”
Now is the time to add space systems, writes MITRE’s Sam Visner, technical fellow and former director of national cybersecurity, and Edward Swallow, senior vice president for civil systems at Aerospace Corporation in a recent op-ed in Politico.
They say that designating space systems as critical infrastructure would galvanize the policy and stakeholder attention and resources needed to secure these systems. “Right now, no central government entity coordinates policy, strategy, programs, or resources to support this infrastructure, and no security standards for space systems exist. We must do better.”
POLITICO: It’s Time to Declare Space Systems as Critical Infrastructure