Amid increasing efforts by businesses to fortify their organizations against hacking, NASA has unveiled its inaugural guide. This guide, titled Space Security Best Practices Guide, marks a noteworthy milestone in NASA’s dedication to ensuring the enduring resilience of missions for both public and private space companies. It serves as a valuable resource to aid companies in elevating their security and reliability measures.
“We acknowledge the significance of safeguarding our space missions from potential threats and vulnerabilities,” stated Misty Finical, Deputy Principal Advisor for Enterprise Protection at NASA.
“This guide symbolizes a collaborative endeavor to establish a set of principles that will empower us to identify and mitigate risks, ensuring the sustained success of our missions, both within Earth’s orbit and beyond,” Finical emphasized.
For whom is this guide intended?
NASA states that the Space Security Best Practices Guide is crafted to serve the space agency’s global collaborators, the industry at large, and individuals engaged in the burgeoning domains of space exploration and development. “The guide is tailored to offer security guidance applicable to missions, programs, or projects of any scale,” it further explained.
Requirement for security in space missions
The release of the guide coincides with a period when information systems and operational technologies in the space industry are progressively becoming more intertwined and interconnected. These advancements provide advantages for NASA and other space organizations in terms of collaborative work, communication, and data gathering in space.
Given that new, intricate systems may also possess vulnerabilities, the guide aims to offer best practices for addressing emerging challenges and implementing safety and security measures.
NASA is in the process of formulating cybersecurity principles for its space systems, encapsulated within its Space System Protection Standard.
NASA will gather input from the space community to incorporate into upcoming editions of the guide.