In the rush to build and launch smallsats, operators and manufacturers prioritize speed, affordability and flexibility. Security, if considered at all, is often an afterthought despite the sensitive data smallsats can collect and transmit.

Though attacks during flight can only be ground-based, it is nevertheless paramount to trust the on-board secrets, software and hardware the satellite will use to collect, process and transmit sensitive information to the ground, while also preserving their confidentiality, integrity and availability.

This requires an end-to-end approach involving both the ground segment (mission control, ground stations, cloud services, etc) and the space segment (software and hardware) during all the stages of the mission, from design to launch to end of service.

The CYSEC Lab is a team of ethical hackers combining both cybersecurity expertise with experience in assessing and designing smallsat architectures. The CYSEC Lab can help smallsat operators and manufacturers, at the different stages of their mission, respond to end-user security requirements or mitigate specific cyber risks, potentially detrimental to the sustainability of their business or to gain a competitive advantage.

The CYSEC lab implements a simple methodology described in 4 steps:

1. Define relevant threats and assess impacts

   During the threat modeling phase, the CYSEC Lab will help smallsat operators to define the profile of potential attackers, their level of knowledge, their resources and their motivations, as well as the impacts to the system should an attack occur. This phase is essential as it sets the foundation for the rest of the process and drives the ultimate outcome.

2. Risk analysis

   Once attacker profiles have been defined, the CYSEC Lab will help operators draw up all the potential risk scenarios. This phase usually takes the form of a brainstorming session with inputs from both the operator’s technical team and an external offensive team of qualified ethical hackers.

   The scenarios will typically be numerous—there could easily be over 100 for a simple smallsat mission. In order to prepare for the next phase, the scenarios should be plotted on a graph based on likelihood and severity. The CYSEC Lab will estimate the level of effort required to mitigate each scenario.

3. Risk trade-off

   Once the list of scenarios has been created, the CYSEC Lab will help operators determine which risks can be considered acceptable and which ones must be mitigated.

4. Architecture design

   Obviously, each use case or mission scenario is unique, and each operator or client will have its own definition of what the level of risk can be considered acceptable. This will result in a unique architecture, but the central security concepts will still apply.

   Depending on requests, the CYSEC Lab can also assist operators in the mitigation of risks related to outsourcing products and services critical for the mission.