Synopsis
Space systems face growing threats from purposeful interference and cyber attacks that could result in mission degradation or loss. To address these concerns, NASA has established the Space Security: Best Practices Guide (BPG) to provide guidance on critical mission security principles and controls.
Overview of Space Threat Environment
The space domain is becoming increasingly contested as more countries and commercial entities operate in space. This congestion, combined with advances in anti-satellite weapons, jamming technologies, and cyber intrusion capabilities, poses new dangers for space assets. Attackers may attempt to deny, degrade, disrupt, deceive or destroy space systems to achieve their objectives.
NASA missions are vulnerable to a range of threat actor tactics, including:
- Gaining network access
- Exploiting vulnerabilities
- Defeating cryptography and authentication
- Establishing sophisticated command and control
- Manipulating cyber or physical systems
- Gaining physical access to components
- Influencing personnel through social engineering
Key Principles for Security
The BPG focuses on principles to mitigate vulnerabilities across space and ground segments. The principles encompass three pillars vital to mission survivability and resiliency:
Prevent: Design features that reduce likelihood of cyber events
Mitigate: Design features that reduce impact/likelihood of cyber events
Recover: Design features that enable system resiliency and capability restoration
Specific principles highlighted in the BPG include:
Command Authority: Encrypt command links to prevent unauthorized access; protect critical program information.
Position, Navigation, Timing (PNT): Ensure resilience to interference or loss of external PNT services like GPS.
Monitoring/Detection: Incorporate capabilities to rapidly detect cyber actor actions on space/ground systems.
Integrity Checks: Verify software, firmware and hardware integrity; check for malware.
Resilient Architectures: Employ least privilege and domain separation principles; implement boundary protection.
Anomaly Response: Address potential cyber events in fault management, anomaly response and recovery designs.
Testing: Perform end-to-end negative testing to validate system security features.
Implementation Guidance
The BPG serves as an initial baseline of security best practices relevant for all NASA missions. It provides mapping to standards like NIST 800-53 to help programs meet existing security requirements.
Missions can tailor principles as appropriate based on project type and risk factors. For example, encryption may be tailored for deep space or hosted payloads to reduce operational impacts.
Annual training is recommended covering topics like interference reporting procedures and supply chain cyber risks. NASA’s Mission Resilience and Protection Program can assist with implementation activities, guidelines and training.
Looking Ahead
As the threat landscape evolves, NASA plans to incorporate relevant principles from the BPG into Agency standards and requirements. Additional threat modelling, risk analysis and security frameworks tailored for space systems will help drive security investments and design decisions.
Adoption of the recommended best practices enables NASA missions to operate safely by preventing, mitigating and responding effectively to emerging cyber threats.
