A recent article from DARPA has outlined what they believe to be key failures in the currently used metrics and standardizations in the cybersecurity space. Due to the many nuanced factors that go into accessing potential threats or vulnerabilities, it is believed that there exist many inefficiencies in the cybersecurity procedures that are used today. Differentiating between a harmless software bug or flaw and a major system architecture vulnerability can be a difficult task that takes time to fully assess the severity of the situation. For these reasons the article states that newer techniques are required in order to quickly and accurately measure vulnerable within modern and complex systems.
Though the DARPA article is targeted at a more broad spectrum of the overall cyberspace community, I believe that similar parallels and conclusions can be formed when viewing from the lens of space cybersecurity. In the latest lecture material, it was stated how greater standardization efforts throughout the industry are needed in order to establish more robust security procedures moving forward. Standards such as the IEEE Standard for Space System Cybersecurity will help provide more concrete requirements that can be used for space systems moving forward.
The newest DARPA program is titled INGOTS (Intelligent Generation of Tools for Security). This program is working to “pioneer new techniques driven by program analysis and artificial intelligence to measure vulnerabilities”. In addition to this, one of the program’s phases will focus on design and development of tools used for identifying system flaws. I believe it would be the hope of many for these tools to become standardized throughout the industry so that they may mature and the cybersecurity protocols and procedures will become further refined as time goes on.