Oak Creek-based
Astronautics Corporation of America has been awarded a phase one cybersecurity research contract from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that will allow the company to identify and categorize several sets of data that will eventually be used to train an artificial intelligence model being developed by the FAA.
The FAA hopes to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to parse out when a cyber-attack is happening within the aviation ecosystem. The challenge is getting enough data to train an AI model. That’s where Astronautics steps in.
“When you talk about flying in the United States, there’s a lot of data that flows everywhere,” said
Dave Jones, senior manager of aerospace cybersecurity at Astronautics. “The FAA is concerned about how they’re able to tell if there’s a cybersecurity attack going on.”
Under the 12-month contract, Astronautics’ avionics cybersecurity assurance group will identify, categorize, and characterize data coming from three sources: airlines, airports, and aircraft. Once catalogued, this data will help the FAA develop its AI/ML algorithms.
“If you can’t get tremendously large datasets, what you want to do is create some context,” said Jones. “We’re cataloging this data and creating some context rules.”
Those rules will help train the FAA’s AI/ML models to accurately pinpoint a cyberattack. Adding context means the FAA doesn’t have to rely on such a large dataset.
While the aviation industry is concerned that the increasing prevalence of AI makes it easier for criminals to carry out cyber-attacks, Jones said the actions being taken by the FAA are not in response to any sort of influx of attacks taking place.
“As far as sophisticated attacks on aircraft not a lot of them are happening yet. It’s too difficult at this point,” he said.
Astronautics has worked with the FAA for the past eight years. The last time the two organizations worked together, Astronautics developed a methodology for determining what the cybersecurity risk for avionics is. Then the company determined ways to lower that risk through the addition of security controls. Astronautics also conducted advanced air-ground communications studies to identify weaknesses and propose mitigations.
“As an industry leader in cybersecurity, we are pleased to once again partner with the FAA on research aimed at protecting the aviation ecosystem from cyber-attacks,” said
Matt Frei, director of connected aircraft solutions at Astronautics. “A critical step in making aviation more resilient is to understand the data and data pathways within different aviation networks, as this will enable and optimize the development of advanced AI/ML algorithms that will enhance our abilities to respond to and recover from advanced cyber threats.”
