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What’s New: An OpEd in Spatial Source correctly pointing out that PNT is an essential cyber component that could, and has, failed. And could, and has been, exploited.
Why It’s Important: A global problem with PNT would make the CrowdStrike problem look like a day at the beach.
What Else to Know:
- This article talks about possible economic impacts with the loss of GPS or GNSS. The numbers are really incalculable. See our article “The billon-dollar-a-day GPS mistake?”
- We found the following bit in the article about a FrontierSI report particularly interesting:”Calling resilient PNT a “non-negotiable” requirement for safeguarding Australia’s critical infrastructure and economic vitality, the report and white paper outlined measures that would boost resilience:
- Ensuring that building resilient PNT services is not treated as an outcome to enforcement of legislation, but that other methods should be considered to achieve the same level of resilience as other Australian critical infrastructure assets.
- Developing an alternative source of timing, either through space or terrestrial means, that will aid in synchronisation and dissemination across the nation.
- Review and address the nation’s supply chain dependencies on atomic clock technology.
- Undertaking a comprehensive study and appraisal of all vulnerabilities to a loss of GNSS, with recommended mitigations
Could PNT have its own ‘CrowdStrike’ moment?
By jnally on 24 July, 2024
Last week’s global IT outage caused by a routine but errant software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, has had people questioning the vulnerablility of ICT systems.
One specific technological system that remains a growing source of concern is the global positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) system, which is almost entirely reliant on space-based global navigation satellite systems (GNSS).
The question then is, are space-based PNT systems at risk of having a serious outage caused by a similar errant software update? Could they have their own CrowdStrike moment?
The answer is that, yes, not only could it happen, but it has already happened, and on more than one occasion.
