In December’s Be Cyber Aware at Sea, Phish and Ships explains the dangers of GPS spoofing and how can the shipping industry protect its GPS technologies, in light of automation development within the industry.
Accordingly, although GPS is a powerful tool for the shipping industry, it comes with many challenging including spoofing and jamming, given the industry’s evolution in the digital era.
GPS/GNSS signal jamming and spoofing can expose the vulnerability of PNT-reliant systems. To solve the challenges, Orolia Maritime took part in a remotely operated service at sea demonstration where an unmanned vessel was ‘tele-operated’ from 500 miles away.
Specifically, the maritime solutions firm used its SecureSync Interference Detection and Mitigation suite to provide a PNT cybersecurity package to ensure precise, reliable data to a control centre from where the vessel was piloted. The suite includes GNSS threat δetection and mitigation, as well as the option to include encrypted and alternative signals for use in GNSS-denied environments.
It should be reminded that GPS is directly feeding into ‘Real-time Big Data’. Big Data is the extraction and analysis of data from broader sets that are too big to be handled by regular software; real-time is the immediacy of the insights provided. This core information has many applications, not least in creating more efficient operations and logistics.
This kind of information is highly valuable, and not just to the organizations but to the cyber criminal as well. Falsifying data upon which organizations rely, delaying (jamming) it, or stealing it, is one of many threats. Given the dominance that Big Data will have in the future, particularly in burgeoning automation, being able to trust your data is key.
Concluding, acquiring resilient PNT is crucial, from military missions and commercial freight shipping to port management, search and rescue, research and fishing operations. Jamming and spoofing detection, threat mitigation, and alternative PNT sources configured in multiple layers of protection can ensure continuous operations, even in compromised environments.
