2025-04-26 –, Track 1
Safety has been at the forefront of civil aviation since the formalization of safe software development standards. These standards had be developed by the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) and were first released in 1981. For the next two decades, the aviation industry continued to develop safety standards for both hardware and systems design . Soon, aviation found that aircraft were becoming flying data centers with increasing levels of connectivity to match. (Reword)
Aviation has extensive data, processing capability, and global connectivity, but how does security fit into aviation?
In this talk, participants will learn about how Safety and Security is applied to aviation system design and how they interact in non-obvious ways with one another. We'll define the real, legal, definition of Safety, and you'll learn about the importance of acronyms like Design Assurance Levels (DAL) and Security Assurance Levels (SAL). Most importantly, we'll walk through a simple system analysis to demonstrate how security threats can impact system safety. In the end, you'll have a new perspective on how objective-based systems design can help security teams draw links between threats and their respective impacts regarding operations.
This talk will first touch upon the fundamental definitions of Safety from the FAA's (own) Advisory Circulars and explain Design Assurance Levels (DALs). Next, Intentional Unauthorized Electronic Interaction (IUEI) is introduced to familiarize attendees with concepts from the aviation standards documents. The presentation then connects Safety directly to Security Assurance Levels (SALs) and illustrates how they are similar, though answer different questions. The talk ends with a discussion on a simple system architecture and walks through multiple attack paths and mitigations to explain how Safety and Security can help, or hinder one another.
The link between Safety and Security in safety analyses and threat modeling is rarely seen outside of a few specialized industries. By bringing this talk to a general cybersecurity audience, the attendees will gain new insights into how aviation design principles of high reliability safety systems can be applied to develop both security narratives and mitigations measures for their own respective industries. This talk is presented from a systems engineering view and does not require prior aviation expertise.
A key part of this talk is the analysis of a simple system architecture. This provides attendees the understanding of how security standards are applied to aviation systems. As we walk through different security threats to example system, the audience will better understand how a system continues to evolve throughout development. The final system example shows how different requirements can be either for safety or security mitigations within a system and how both safety and security teams are a vital part of safety/security inclusion.
Lillian Ash Baker is a Product Security Engineer with The Boeing Company and Wisk Aero. Her work is instrumental in securing the next generation of civil aviation aircraft. She has over 15 years of experience in the full lifecycle of certified avionics development. Lily has spoken at multiple cybersecurity conferences specifically on the challenges autonomy brings to the Advanced Air Mobility sector and the importance of Safety and Security in aircraft systems design. When not working on next generation aircraft, she volunteers with the Aerospace Village. Lily is passionate about educational outreach that inspires the next generation of aerospace cybersecurity professionals.