Pierluigi Paganini November 19, 2018

The defense and aviation industries are particularly exposed to cyber attacks and are adopting new countermeasures to harden their infrastructure and aircraft.

Crook and nation-state actors continue to target defense and aviation industries and in some case, the increasing level of sophistication of the attacks is creating great concerns.

The Israeli government is moving to harden aviation assets from cyber attacks, it has created a consortium of aviation and is asking cybersecurity firms to identify new attack vectors against the assets in the commercial aviation industry (i.e. airports, airlines, and aircraft) and develop countermeasures.

“A group of Israeli cybersecurity firms, along with the Economy and Industry Ministry, has set up a new cyber consortium for the aviation industry. The announcement was made Wednesday as part of the 5th International Conference of Homeland Security and Cyber, organized by Israel’s Export Institute.” reads a blog post published by the Times of Israel.

Yigal Unna, director general of the Israel National Cyber Directorate, explained that the group is tasked to predict threats before they can hit any asset in the industry. The heavy introduction of technology in the aviation industry urges a new approach to tackle emerging cyber threats.

“We are trying to foresee” events, “not wait for September 11,” said Yigal Unna in a press briefing on Wednesday, of the initiative. “The civil aviation industry like any other industry is becoming more and more digitalized, more and more high tech. We see more and more threat vectors and cyber attack vectors. And we want to think in advance, before the fact,” he said. “In Israel we have the benefit of bringing everyone together” quickly and easily. “And we are fast movers.”

Yigal Unna added that Israel is under attack, its infrastructure deals with over 10,000 to 100,000 low-level cybersecurity attacks a day.

“We all the time have attacks,” he said. The attacks vary in scale, he said. “If it is shark bites or more mosquito bites. (For) mosquito bites, it is tens or hundreds of thousands a day. On a higher level it is a different number.”

A close look at the investments in Israel for this specific industry could give us an idea of the perception of cybersecurity in the industry.

The sector in Israel has attracted over $800 million in investments, 16 percent of the world’s total cybersecurity investments in 2017, according to data compiled by Start-Up Nation Central.

“We need to move to the fifth generation of cybersecurity,” said Check Point Software Technologies CEO Gil Shwed. “We need automated tools to prevent attacks from starting,” he said. “The key is prevention,” and although many doubt this may be possible, “I believe it is possible,” 

“We need to be running faster than the hackers.”

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – aviation industry, hacking)

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