The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and U.S. Space Command recently signed a first-of-its-kind agreement outlining a framework to enable the protection of commercial remote sensing space assets vital to the nation’s intelligence collection mission.
The Commercial Space Protection Tri-Seal Strategic Framework brings together the three organizations to jointly share threat information and conduct other measures to avoid or reduce harm to commercial satellites from potential threats.
“This agreement is additional recognition of how valuable commercial image providers have become in the space environment,‘’ said Frank Avila, acting director, NGA Commercial Operations. “Our commercial vendors give us the flexibility to strategically consider all available capabilities—whether government or commercial—to make sure we can get the right data to the right place at the right time.”
This is the first comprehensive agreement between the intelligence community and USSPACECOM on how to bring commercial vendors into the information-sharing process to help ensure effective joint collaboration and cooperation from the minute an event happens, with near real-time information sharing about any risks and threats to NRO-contracted commercial space capabilities.
The new framework begins to address concerns and helps ensure NRO-contracted commercial imagery providers are aware of—and can plan for—threats within a more congested and contested space environment. It also facilitates communication about potential threats between the government entities and commercial providers.
Overall, the framework defines the roles and responsibilities of NGA, NRO and USSPACECOM in three critical areas—threat information sharing, anomaly investigation and response and collection strategies:
- Threat information sharing between the U.S. government and the commercial sector creates a better understanding of the space domain in general and the threats to collection assets specifically.
- Anomaly reporting, investigation and response are needed to inform appropriate and timely actions in the face of current and emerging threats.
- Commercial imagery collection strategies may need to be adjusted if threats require a change to commercial collection postures.
“This cornerstone agreement advances U.S. Space Command’s space domain awareness through additional, non-traditional sources of information,” said Mr. Victor Vigliotti, Chief of Commercial Integration Branch at U.S. Space Command. “The lessons learned from implementing this historic framework will enhance the U.S. government’s ability to bi-laterally share time-sensitive threat information with commercial providers—enabling the rapid dissemination of threat information across the commercial space enterprise.”
U.S. Space Command will lead threat information sharing with NRO-contracted commercial imagery providers and the NRO Operations Center for space events, counterspace attack and USSPACECOM warning problems. The command will also lead investigations into anomalies reported by commercial imagery providers, in coordination with NGA, NRO and other organizations as appropriate.
By delineating roles and responsibilities in these areas, NGA, NRO and USSPACECOM ensure their organizations effectively identify, assess and adapt to threats against commercial imagery collection. This framework also helps ensure NRO-contracted commercial imagery providers are properly informed of emergent and imminent threats to their space assets, enabling providers to make informed decisions to best support collection operations and benefit them in their support of U.S. government and non-governmental customers.
Over the next six months, NGA, NRO and USSPACECOM will jointly complete concepts of operations and standard operating procedures for implementing the framework and improving commercial satellite protection going forward.
At BLAKFX, we are 100% supportive of LEO satellite expansion and are extremely well versed in the sector. The LEO satellite firms know that the grid by itself does nothing at all to protect your firm or nations data. No nations national security will be able to rely on LEO grids until they are completely secure. Users will not trust the networks until the issue is addressed.
Actually, one of the greatest threats to LEO satellite systems is if they themselves get hacked. There is the obvious issue on the significant problems on earth for communications and mobility reliant sectors like shipping or air travel. However, a bigger concern is that here can also be significant telemetry problems and the risk of satellites being commandeered and programmed to collide with each other. If an event of this magnitude were to occur, the entire sector could be dead before it even starts.
The Helix22 SDK will protect against all of those occurrences.
Even further, Helix22 offers a latency coefficient that is unheard of in the encryption world and is 1000x faster than TLS.
You see, with the Helix22 SDK, the data is always secure and protected. Our security cryptography is neutral to the network or internet service it is running on. The Helix22 data security multi-layered encryption is embedded along with the data, and therefore cannot be exfiltrated. Your typical data security product simply tries to prevent unintended users or attackers from gaining access to your data. Firewalls have proven no match for sophisticated hackers so the most current thinking is in terms of identity management. Solutions such as password managers, 2FA, biometrics are rampant. However, human error or insider attacks have proven more common than good security protocol and id management products are proving ineffective and also are not user friendly.
The bottom-line is that regardless of how attackers gain access, that as soon as the security perimeter is breached, then data access cannot be stopped. People working from home have only compounded this human weakness and successful attacks are now commonplace. LEO Satellite grids will not assist in preventing humans from defeating themselves.
Encryption has proven to have it’s limitations as well. 99.9% of encryption products attempt to protect your data while in transit. However, on a LEO satellite grid, as with here land-based networks, your data is in the clear until encryption is applied with the key. Most encryption services have no choice but to read, copy and save all transmissions prior to encryption, that is just how they work. The only thing keeping a 3rd party or government from accessing it all, is the willingness of the company in question not to release it. Just ask Apple how much fun the have going to court all the time.
D2D encryption
We can make this claim as the tech engineers at BLAKFX invented and patented a genuine device2device (D2D) encryption. We manage data security transmission through the truly brilliant and also patented universal Helix22 key service. The Helix22 encryption originates on your network or device, not just when the app is opened. This means, that when data arrives to our key server, it is already encrypted so all it needs to do is issue another key. Signal and Telegram cannot claim this level of security. This key will then only work with the intended device, which generates a matching key required to open the data. In this protocol, we are truly a “zero-knowledge” server so your communications and transmissions remain completely top secret. Even in the event that BLAKFX were subpoenaed, we can honor the request by just handing over the encrypted content…as that is literally all we have. Helix22 also only use keys just one-time and then destroys them. This way the data security is future forward prefect. Therefore, in our unique device-to-device (D2D) world, there is no opportunity at all for any data leak.
This same protocol just described, can be the same with all your 3rd party vendors and suppliers. It does not matter in the least what platform they are running or what device they are using or even the type of data, it is all 100% protected. We do however, strongly advise that all firms involved be utilizing Helix22 due to the nature of the data content. Helix22 can ensure that whatever data they are generating is protected as well.
Let’s take it a step further. Even if your organization were a victim of an internal attack or a victim of malicious open source downloads, there is no reason for concern. Any data that has been forwarded, downloaded, copied or saved cannot be exfiltrated. Period. We have the technology industries foremost data packets which are protected with multi-layered, military grade encryption algorithms that have already proven the ability to withstand penetration testing from MI5 and quantum computing attacks.
One final practical genius of DNA BindingTM is in that it is immediately compatible with whichever system or software you are utilizing. Therefore, any organization can forward information to another and then discuss it and there is immediate privacy.
Helix22 is Quantum Immune – Start Your Integration on our Git
The Helix22 data security SDK accomplishes the following:
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- Protects all your firms data at rest, in use and in transit
- Renders ransomware threats obsolete
- Eliminates human error
- Eliminates all malicious or interior attacks
- Verifies original content i.e. minimizes the threat of impersonation attacks and deep fakes
- Reduces latency and optimizes 5G networks
- Installs with 5 lines of code
- Runs on any platform, network, device and in any programming language
- Provides perfect future/forward secrecy
- Delivers “zero-knowledge” encryption
- Compatible with all cloud, 3rd party and vendor services
- Enables Internet of Things data security by providing protection at the Edge and has ultra low latency
- Ensures privacy and security for blockchain and all cryptocurrency transactions
- Is quantum ready – so there’s no need to upgrade when the time comes
- Requires no employee training
- Exceeds all gov’t and banking security standards
- Meets all international compliance regulations
BLAKFX is Based on Success
Our founders, Robert Statica PhD and Kara Coppa, also founded Wickr, which is used by the US military and has never been hacked since its inception in 2012. The Helix22 data security SDK is several generations enhanced since then. Dr. Statica also delivered the encryption for the world’s most secure phone, Katim.
Founder – Robert Statica PhD Founder – Kara Coppa
Co-Founders of Wickr KatimTM Ultra Secure Smartphone
The LEO Satellite world will bring the internet to many more people and hopefully might even lead to lower fees for users. It is not however, going to solve the data security issue without Helix22 installed.
Helix22 – Zero Risk