In the rapidly growing space industry understanding who is responsible for defending satellites against cyberattacks is often a critical question that should be asked during the concept development phase of the mission. In some cases, lack of clarity has been found concerning responsibilities for addressing cyber threats to satellites and responding to attacks. Over the recent years, the military side of space has seen countries expand their air commands to the space domain, add space commands, and establish space commands.1
“Threat actors can exploit technical vulnerabilities to try to get into a network, but if you have companies or governments that are completely disorganized, that can make you waste time in your recovery in case of a cyberattack or it might make the attack worse.”1
In France, the Cyber Defense Command is responsible for diagnosing attacks, attribution, system recovery and repair for their military satellites. Cyber Defense Command would only get involved on the commercial side if there is a link back to the government.
In Germany, the Cyber and Information Domain Service is the group responsible for defending military satellites from cyber attacks. The Cyber and Information Domain Service also handles commercial vehicle attacks.
In the U.K. the military responsibility is the National Cyber Force and they do not get involved in commercial satellite attacks.
In the US, Space Force’s Space Delta 6 is responsible for military satellites.1
These establishments of responsibilities follows the NIST CSF ID.AM-6 frame work and allows the framework to be further followed by establishing Cybersecurity Roles and Responsibilities2.
1 – https://spacenews.com/whos-in-charge-of-preventing-and-responding-to-cyberattacks/