The White House announced last week that Howard Schmidt, President Obama’s cybersecurity coordinator, met last month in Washington, D.C., with his Russian counterpart Nikolay Klimashin for in-depth discussions on strengthening bilateral relations in the area of cyberspace security. “[O]ur goal was to continue building mutual confidence in our two governments’ activities in cyberspace to reduce the risk of misperception and inadvertent crisis,” wrote Schmidt in a White House blog entry. Schmidt said this diplomatic outreach with the Russians is consistent with the White House’s cyberspace strategy released in May. He said, by year’s end, the two sides want to have three initiatives in place: regular information exchanges on technical threats like botnets; a better understanding each other’s military views on operating in cyberspace; and around-the-clock systems to communicate about cybersecurity issues that leverage existing bilateral crisis-prevention communications links. (Schmidt-Klimashin joint statement)
When the Space Force discusses the cyber threats faced by the service or the commercial satellite providers it uses, it typically frames the issue as a nation-state one. But for cyber defenders in the commercial space sector responsible for day-to-day operations, the reality is rather different: Like other providers of…
