Two Senegal Airlines airbuses upon arrival in Dakar. A recent survey of the aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul industry revealed holes in industry cyber defenses.
Photo: Seyllou Diallo/AFP/Getty Images
Many of the biggest players in the aviation industry have extensive cybersecurity in place to defend against hackers, but is that enough? The answer is simple: no.
As we have seen in many recent attacks by Russian state-sponsored hackers and others that have targeted infrastructure industries like aviation, cybercriminals go after the weakest links in the chain to penetrate the larger systems. In March, for instance, the United States Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued an alert warning of Russian cyber espionage against the nation’s electricity grid and various infrastructure industries, including aviation. The hacks began as early as March 2016, and their access point to critical infrastructure was “peripheral organizations such as trusted third-party suppliers with less secure…
