Hensoldt Cyber and Beyond Gravity: Bringing IT Security for Satellites to a New Level

April 01, 2022

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Beyond Gravity (formerly RUAG Space) and HENSOLDT Cyber announce their collaboration to offer the IT security operating system TRENTOS for the latest satellite computer Lynx from Beyond Gravity.

Ensuring a high level of IT security for satellites is at the heart of today's efforts to make satellites more robust and reliable. “As satellites have become increasingly critical to the infrastructure of modern society, there is an increased need for cyber resilience protecting space,” says Anders Linder, head of the global satellites business at Beyond Gravity (formerly RUAG Space). There is a strong demand for both, highly secure IT solutions for ground systems on Earth as well as for satellites in Space.

HENSOLDT Cyber’s approach to cyber security is different from conventional IT solutions. Instead of standard add-on security products, which treat symptoms rather than addressing the underlying problems, HENSOLDT offers products that are designed to ensure the integrity of embedded systems at the core: the operating system and the processor. “We build systems that are secure from the ground up using formal methods which provide mathematical proofed system features to achieve true trustworthiness,” says Sascha Kegreiß, CTO at HENSOLDT Cyber, who is also member of the governing board of the open-source seL4© Foundation. “With TRENTOS we are providing an easy way to enable security-by-design for space application development to strongly oppose cyberwarfare.” The new high security operating system TRENTOS is based on the seL4© microkernel, which provides proven security capabilities under all operating conditions. “It is therefore an excellent choice to meet the high requirements of the space industry,” adds Kegreiß.

“With HENSOLDT Cyber’s new IT security operating system for our satellite computer Lynx, we can offer a higher value to our customers worldwide”, says Anders Linder from Beyond Gravity. “This cooperation is an important step to offer spacecraft platforms with IT security at a new level.” As the Lynx computer is flexible, it can be easily configured with TRENTOS. “We also see possibilities to combine this computer with several additional capabilities, such as different communication links, as well as other features and hardware.”

Source : Hensoldt