3 Ways to Protect Your Airport from Cybersecurity Threats

Cybersecurity incidents, like data breaches or ransomware attacks, have impacted nearly every industry. Hospitals, colleges, even city governments have fallen victim to cyber-attacks, many occurring because of a simple vulnerability that was exploited by a hacker.

There is a ransomware attack every 14 seconds. With more than 1 billion U.S. passengers traveling through airports in 2019, your network is open for business, to both good and bad actors.

How can your airport do more to beef up its cybersecurity measures to help keep cyber criminals at bay?

Vet your vendors (and airlines!)

While you may have control of the cybersecurity measures within your staff, you probably have less influence over your vendors and airlines using your facility. Whether it’s a concessionaire or the largest airline in the world, vetting those outside sources to ensure they’re not introducing cybersecurity vulnerabilities to your airport is a critical step in the onboarding process – and should be done regularly to ensure standards are maintained.

One of the most prolific data breaches to date, the Target breach of 2013, occurred due to a third-party vendor introducing a vulnerability, which led to 70 million stolen records and a 46 percent drop in profits for Target.

Controlling the Airport of Things

With the boom in connected devices and the expectation from passengers that those devices will work end-to-end on their travels, more opportunities for network intrusion exist than ever before.

Combining the need for connectivity with the increasingly sophisticated tools cybercriminals deploy could spell disaster for your facility. With more travelers using your systems and introducing vulnerabilities, the systems you need for daily operations, like access and departure control and security cameras, could be at risk of downtime or being hacked.

The aviation industry utilizes complex infrastructure with integrations into a number of systems that require constant protection. Introducing vulnerabilities from the outside, or via insider threat, could put your airport on lockdown.

Perform regular Vulerability Assessments

Archetype SC’s Security Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (SRVA), is a tool that uncovers network vulnerabilities that could be exploited by a cybercriminal, allowing your organization to take a proactive approach to its cybersecurity. SRVA allows our security experts to look at your network as a hacker would see it, finding areas that are susceptible to attack.

A SRVA is a multi-pronged approach to vulnerability scanning, consisting of an internal scan, external scan, interviews with key staff, and qualitative assessment of your security posture. Combining these elements into a deliverable report broken down by severity provides your airport with a remediation plan to shore up areas of weakness.