This week I read an article on spacenews.com about a hybrid space communication network (https://spacenews.com/amazon-microsoft-spikeroak-join-defense-innovation-units-hybrid-space-network-project/).  This article describes how the Defense Innovation Unit, which is a DoD organization focused on acerating the adoption of commercial technology to solve operational challenges (https://www.diu.mil/), has made an agreement with AWS, Kuiper Gov. Solutions, Microsoft Azure, and SpiderOak Mission Systems for a project that will demonstrate a mixed communication network.  This network would consist of existing commercial and government networks.  The goal is to create a “hybrid” network consisting of space, terrestrial, and cloud services for communications services to operational theaters.  This would allow for multiple paths for connections to be made, so that if one path is broken, another still remains.

This, of course, increases the amount of the network that would be susceptible to bad actors.  The senior vice president for SpiderOak states that this hybrid network creates cyber challenges that can’t be solved with a typical “checklist” approach.  DIU is working to prove a “Zero Trust Architecture”, where the users are not trusted in the network, and must provide special keys to be able to access encrypted data.  While this will provide some protection to the network, the key is the multiple paths, so that even if one segment is taken down, there is still other paths for the information to take.