IBM Takes on Aviation Security

Cyber attacks keep Federal Aviation Administrator Randy Babbitt up at night. In a speech Thursday at the FAA IT conference in Orlando, Fla., Babbitt highlighted the importance of professionalism, information sharing and security awareness in combatting cyber threats.

To the latter, FAA soon will have a new prototype security program to fight off attacks on the U.S. civilian aviation system.

The project, in development at IBM, is designed to handle the volume of data that passes through FAA's networks, identify threats and store information for later analysis. The software will correlate historic traffic patterns with realtime data and quickly and accurately analyze potential cyber attacks.

As InformationWeek reported, FAA will be testing the software over a 10-month period to see if it can meet agency needs. The key, according to the article, is that the system will be able to analyze and predict threats before hackers are able to do much damage, essentially cutting them off in the midst of the attack.

"Instead of detecting the symptoms of the attack, you detect the attack while the attacker is still getting his ducks in a row," IBM federal Chief Technology Officer Dave McQueeney said.

FAA also is pushing to deploy its NextGen program, an air traffic control system based on more advanced technology. At a March hearing before the House Transportation and Housing and Urban Development subcommittee, agency officials defended a $1.14 billion budget request for that update. They said that funding for NextGen cybersecurity programs are built into that budget request, and some of the initiatives have their own security architecture.