With over 12,000 active satellites delivering global communications, space has become a highly sophisticated cyber domain. As our dependence on these systems grows, so does the risk—without routine testing and updates, these crucial assets could turn into fatal vulnerabilities.

In an opinion piece published on Via Satellite, Aerospace's SVP of Civil Systems James Myers stresses the need for the U.S. to ramp up investment and radically transform its cybersecurity strategy to address these growing risks.

As Myers writes:

The rising number of targeted attacks and security gaps calls for renewed focus on space cyber. For investors and newer space organizations, cyber resilience should be table stakes for getting in the space game. For established organizations and space systems engineers, the challenge is how to innovate and evolve while keeping cyber in the equation.

He calls for a "radical transformation" of cyber strategy, focused on three general areas:

• Design for resilience and autonomous response. Move beyond defense-in-depth to defense-in-breadth and end-to-end detection and mitigation systems.
• Embrace zero-trust architectures. Like any other online asset, from email to secure databases, every single access attempt must be authenticated and continuously verified.
• Constant vigilance: Assume vulnerabilities exist on every potential attack surface - the work of countering adversaries should never be considered complete.

Aerospace is active in this area, conducting research, launching prototypes to test new techniques, and making available services like SPARTEND. Collaboration and partnership are key, as they are in the terrestrial systems of which space assets are increasingly becoming an extension. You can read Myers's full op-ed here at Via Satellite.