Cyber Security
Cyber security in aviation Lessons from the Aviation Industry Point to a Brighter Future
T By Tony Vizza
he number of reported cyber security breaches has risen at an alarming rate. In the US alone, there have been 1,579 data breaches, resulting in over 178 million records being exposed in 2017 , representing a 44.7% increase on 2016, itself a record year. Cybercrime is now the second most reported crime around the world and in the UK, cybercrime now accounts for over 50% of all crime . Amidst all of the doom and gloom, there is cause for optimism. In the context of human development, there are examples to be found of once nascent industries that are both common, as well as safe today. Perhaps the most analogous of industries that could be analysed to determine the future of the information security industry, is the aviation industry. It is a well-known fact that the Wright Brothers managed to perform the first sustained, controlled, powered and heavier-than-air flight, in an aircraft in the United States in 1903. It is far lesser known, however, that human-carrying kites existed in China and Japan, for military purposes,
30 | Australian Cyber Security Magazine
as far back as the 6th Century AD/ACE, while manned ballooning flights occurred in 1783 in France. Likewise, in the computing world, ancient computer devices, such as tally sticks and abacuses were used over 4,000 years ago in the Middle East which gave rise to mechanical calculators in the 17th century, tabulators in the 19th century and later, electrical calculators and programmable computers. It was not until the era of the personal computer in the 1980’s, however, that computer use entered the mainstream with its own “Wright Brothers� moment. As was the case after the Wright Brothers flight, where aircraft improvement and innovation grew at a frenetic pace, the availability of technology to the masses after the PC era began and has accelerated the development of information technology. Noting that aviation has a 70-year lead on Information Security, and with that time the many triumphs and setbacks, what then can we learn from our peers in the aviation industry, that we can apply to the information security fields?
