Security in ATM – a Validation Approach for Security Prototypes

Kurzfassung

Thanks to the Single European Sky ATM Research Programme (SESAR) and the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), the Air Traffic Management (ATM) community has access to a bunch of tools and methodologies to tackle various problem areas belonging to the ATM of the future. Although SESAR has also created the basis for validation regarding functionality of security prototypes, extensive validation expenditures in respect to tools, systems or prototypes in the ATM security domain have not yet been realized. This is indeed an emerging task when introducing security tools to ATM. The emerging challenges in the next generation ATM when looking at security still seem to be underestimated. This stems from the fact that ATM, when being addressed as a system of systems, not only gives attention to threat sources like those well-known from the cyber security area, but also to ATM specific sources like e.g. satellite communication or Air Traffic Control (ATC) radio communication. In order to establish security management tools in the ATM domain the Global ATM Security Management Project (GAMMA ) started in 2013. The main goal of the project is to develop ideas to solve emerging air traffic management vulnerabilities. This intention is backed up by practical proposals for implementation. The paper will discuss a subset of the GAMMA project outcomes. This will especially deal with the Secure ATC Communications Prototype (SACom). The prototype will be used as an example to enrich the theoretical presented background with a more tangible contribution. Although the project is still on its way there have already been some first insights into the validation phase as several rehearsals already took place. These insights will be described in more detail in the paper. Furthermore the theoretically delivered security prototype validation approach will be mapped to the prototype at hand. The obtained results will be presented and a discussion of the first validation results will be executed. This paper therefore describes as well the postulated security prototype validation methodology as the application of the described methodology on a dedicated prototype for secure ATC voice communication. This may be used as the blueprint for validating other ATM security oriented systems.