Cyber Security Enters The Space Age

Lt Gen (Retd.) Dr Rajesh Pant, National Cyber Security Coordinator, Prime Minister's Office, Government of India, delivered the Keynote.

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I recently attended a conference in Bangalore on Cyber Security in Space. Today people are talking of aspects that we could never have imagined earlier. Why space has become so important is because last year on February 24, when the war in Eastern Europe started, the first attack (if I may say so) was the one on Viasat satellite KA-SAT. That satellite was jammed and made inoperational. This affected not only Ukraine but some other European nations also.

People have realized the importance of space. Today there are about 7800 active satellites orbiting in the lower Earth, medium, geostationary, and polar orbits. They control everything from ATMs to cars, communications to navigation, position location to Earth observation and also military aspects of surveillance.

The future of telecom will involve new aspects as we go along. As far as the Government is concerned, in the telecom sector you would recall that from June 15, 2021, we implemented what is called as the National Security Directive, which stipulates that any equipment (now, this is where it gets interesting, it doesn't bar anything) connected to the telecom network of India has to be trusted equipment from a trusted source.