Cyber Threats To Israel’s Air Traffic Control
Israel is under a constant Cyber-attack, and the government has ordered the General Security Service to take every needed step to counter these attacks. A Cyber-attack on Israeli infrastructure may include air traffic control installations.
The new National Cyber Defence Authority (NCDA) unit, which is responsible for protecting Israel’s national infrastructures against Cyber-attacks, assumes the coordination of protecting certain infrastructure, banks and mobile carriers. Sources said that the air traffic control is also included in the list and in a very high place.
Israeli officials consider the Cyber-attacks as an act of war and some were quoted saying that “This threat is real like rockets that hit our cities”. This means that the proper Israeli organisations will try and locate the source of the attacks and make an effort to neutralize it.
As it looks now, this is an all-out war, and the concerns are high as signs prove that vital national installations are targeted almost daily. The Israeli air traffic control (ATC) system works very closely with this of the Israeli air force (IAF). Therefore, any attempt to disrupt one of them will affect the other and may cause chaos with “very extreme scenarios”.
So the decision that was made in recent days is to mobilise all the assets that Israel disposes, to defend the Israeli vital systems including its ATC system from organised or sporadic Cyber-attack. What is very clear is that many of the budgets that were traditionally channeled to the deployment of advanced systems that are aimed at defending Israel from attacks either by missiles, rockets or enemy aircraft, will be rerouted now to the new Cyber war.
Photo: Recently completed new control Tower at Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv
