New ‘Watch Center’ to ring alarms on space-related cyber threats

WASHINGTON — The public-private Space Information and Analysis Sharing Center (Space-ISAC) today announced the opening of a new Operational Watch Center to detect cyber threats to satellite systems, warn operators and users in real-time, and provide advice on self-defense.

Pentagon leaders have been increasingly concerned about cyber threats to both military and commercial space systems — fears only enhanced by Russia’s cyber attacks on commercial providers in the ongoing war in Ukraine. Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman told House defense appropriators on March 28 that the service has asked for $700 million in fiscal 2024 to beef up cyber defenses.

“Space is a warfighting domain and cyber is a critical area to focus on to ensure space security. I think we all know cyber attacks are becoming more frequent. They’re more severe, they’re even more sophisticated,” Sreenidhi Tummala, a senior software engineer at Lockheed Martin, told reporters during the Space-ISAC press conference.

Lockheed Martin is among a number of  major defense, aerospace and space firms who banded together in 2019 to found Space-ISAC with the strong backing of the Trump administration’s National Security Council. Other founding members include: Northrop Grumman; L3Harris; Kratos; SES; Parsons; Booz Allen Hamilton; the Aerospace Corporation; MITRE and Microsoft; as well as the US government’s National Cyber Center of Excellence and a handful of universities.

The group is one of 25 national ISACs set up to help various industry sectors to thwart and recover from cyberattacks by sharing information on vulnerabilities, mitigation measures, and response options. Space-ISC, which is pay-to-play membership organization for industry, also has links to government agencies both in the United States and abroad. For example, the group is supported by the National Security Council, the National Space Council, the Space Force, the Missile Defense Agency and NASA.

“We have built strong partnerships with more than 30 government agencies worldwide and established a diverse member base of 64 organizations, including 16 founding members, spanning various market sectors, from research and development to space asset owners/operators,” said Space-ISAC Executive Director Erin Miller. “This extensive collaboration allows us to collect and analyze vast amounts of data, making the Watch Center the most comprehensive single point source for information on space security and threats to space assets.”

Using Microsoft’s Azure cloud environment, the new center initially will be staffed by 10 analysts housed in a Colorado Springs facility, but also virtually link to other cyber security experts, according to the group’s press release.

“This collaborative environment offers visualization of threat information, allowing us to rapidly detect, assess, and respond to vulnerabilities, incidents, and threats to commercial space systems. During the initial operating phase, Space ISAC’s Watch Center will operate ten hours a day, five days a week, with the goal of scaling up to 24/7,” the release elaborated.

Frank Backes, senior vice president at Kratos Space Federal, during the briefing explained that while Space-ISAC members have “pre-established connections into the Space-ISAC for sharing information through either their sensor networks that they have established already or through other means within their business infrastructure,” the new center also will provide threat warnings and assistance to non-members.

“I’ll use electromagnetic interference as an example. If that threat were being made against a particular SATCOM operator, we would analyze that threat, we would validate that interference is occurring,” he said. “One of the ways that our analysts would do that is they would contact that satellite operator directly whether they were a member of the Space-ISAC or not.”

The center also would coordinate with other partners, the satellite operator and in some cases “affected users” to come up with mitigation measures, he added.