Randy Hahn - Chief Systems Engineer, Verizon shared his view regarding mission critical infrastructure as is needed in support of the NAS. Verizon comes at this from the perspective of the Network as a Service. There are many different on ramps to access the networks supported – microwave, satellite, low earth orbit (LEO) satellites, cellular, LTE and landline communications. Over time, the network infrastructure has changed to move functionality to the edge of the network. Visibility across the network enables trust which is required for security. Management of application performance impacts the customer experience with the network and can be used to develop different levels of service.
Defence in depth network security is built into Verizon’s solutions. In support of a Zero Trust architecture, defence must be in place at the network perimeter. Transparency also supports this digital transformation which enables a host of applications to change the way we interact and work. Connected devices and vehicles, augmented and virtual reality, work from home/anywhere, authentication to protect from fraud, artificial intelligence and machine learning. There’s a lot going on here and it’s all supported with the core principles of survivability, resiliency, availability and security.
Air Traffic Management Magazine had the opportunity to speak with Randy 1x1 after his session and pose some questions related to the role of telecommunications in aviation.
How can telecommunications play a role in supporting the NAS with uncrewed aircraft?
Mission critical networks follow the same principles. The question is what will be the FAA’s mission – how much do they want to control? The bandwidth they need to track and manage the number of UAVs that will be flying correlates to the same amount of bandwidth needed to support millions of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors/devices on the network.
How do we ensure that safety critical networks are cyber-resilient?
This is an area where defence in depth becomes important. Verizon will provide layer 1 – 7 security. When the use of a cloud infrastructure is needed, the Department of Defense provides a secured cloud Federal Ramp. These are connected pathways to the cloud that provide customers with the access they need and ensue an extra layer of security on top. This can be managed by the individual organisations or even outsourced to Verizon’s Security Operations Center (SOC) to support. SOC functionality can be focused on monitoring and management of ports, threat hunting or gathering and analysing threat data to make recommendations for courses of action to the protect the network.
To learn more about cyber threats that should be considered in your future planning, Verizon has release its 2022 Data Break Investigation Report. Threats do not always come from external resources, there are also internal risks that could be purely accidental that open your network to threats. It’s always good to stay one step ahead.
