This week I’m going to talk about a short article from Spacenews.com, Space Force shifting resources to intelligence and cybersecurity (https://spacenews.com/space-force-shifting-resources-to-intelligence-and-cybersecurity/).  It is 9 days old at this point, but it is fairly relevant to this course, even though it doesn’t say much.  To summarize, the Space Force is wanting to integrate cybersecurity and intelligence specialists with their everyday satellite operators.  The goal is to reduce response times to incidents, and to “harden space systems against cyber attacks”.  They are also going to change the training and testing regimen so that Guardians can “rehearse missions in a combat-like environment”.  While most people don’t think about what that means, or recall scenes from the Space Force TV show, it is something that needs to be practiced ahead of time, because learning how react to attacks of any kind in the moment does not bode well for victory.  Just like the other branches of the military train and simulate battles in their domains, the Space Force needs to start doing the same, whether that is cyber, or in the physical realm of maneuvering spacecraft, they need to drill just the same.

I thought that while this article is short, it is important for cybersecurity of space systems, especially since we have noted several times in our meetings that cyber awareness and cyber security have not always been at the forefront of space systems.  This move represents a key change in how at least the DoD is treating space operations, and so I am hopeful that we will maybe see some trickle down effects into civilian and industry space systems.