Contemporary Directions in Cybersecurity Avionics Risk Analysis

With the increase in the congested airspace that incorporates signals, commands, and policies aggregated over multi-domain operations, cybersecurity risk is increasing. In this paper, the IEEE AESS Cyber Avionics Security Panel highlights contemporary methods discussed in aviation cybersecurity. As focused on the awareness and risk, the paper identifies directions for(1) next generation threats in aerospace cybersecurity, (2) artificial intelligence and machine learning in support or aerospace cyber defense including large language models, (3) applying zero trust and blockchains to avionics, (4) advanced edge computing implications to avionics cybersecurity, (5) cybersecurity in air and space traffic management (A-STM), including securing the internet of things (IoT) as a sensor in the airspace infrastructure, and (6) methods of cyber-security risk analysis that includes hardware, software, and data. Three focused advances include discussions on large language models (LLMs), zero-trust policies, and risk scoring.