Los Angeles — The U.S. Space Force is working to ensure its vendors’ supply chains are secure from cyberattacks with plans for free security assessments.
“We are drafting a framework for supply chain vendor vetting, such as cyber systems and assessment teams, cyber risk management cells, and free non-attributable security scans to assist in evaluating current vendor IT security postures,” Jennifer Krolikowski, chief information officer at Space Systems Command, said Thursday during the CyberLEO conference in Los Angeles.
The goal of the assessments is to help companies working with the U.S. Department of Defense see where their supply chains are most vulnerable to better prepare them for cyberattacks, Krolikowski said. No timeline was released for when the assessments will begin.
“It’s kind of hard to solve a problem if you don’t know what the problem actually is,” she said.
The Space Force and its commercial partners must be proactive in addressing cybersecurity concerns, building protections into their systems from the start, Krolikowski said. It is critical that organizations can respond to cyberthreats in real time with reprogrammable payloads, new reconfigurable nodes and modules, zero trust architectures and agile hardware, she noted.
Krolikowski said her office is exploring other ways to support vendors against cyberattacks, such as providing secure enclaves where companies can test their systems without bearing additional security costs.
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