NATO Urged to Develop Cybersecurity to Protect Against Navigation Satellites & Quantum Communications Satellites

(Meritalk) North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to study and address its own and member countries’ space-based asset cybersecurity challenges, according to a recent Chatham House report. NATO’s strategic military systems across land, sea, and air overwhelmingly depend on space-based assets like satellites, the report said, adding that those satellites depend on cyber-vulnerable technologies. Any cyberthreats to member states’ space-based assets, therefore, could bring consequences to NATO military strategy and functions.
To best protect space-based assets from cyberattacks, the report said NATO should focus on minimizing risk through “preparedness, resilience, and continuity” to create a more preemptive cybersecurity strategy. That’s especially important as China and Russia – countries that NATO considers threats – have pioneered more complex space cybertechnologies like new navigation satellites and quantum communications satellites.