Home // International Journal On Advances in Security, volume 13, numbers 1 and 2, 2020 // View article

Searching for Stars: Analyzing and Defining UAV Cyber Risk Assessments

Authors:
Dillon Pettit
Scott Graham
Patrick Sweeny

Keywords: Cyber-physical; Cybersecurity; COTS; Quantitativeassessment; Risk; UAV

Abstract:
The small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle market, com-monly called UAVs, has grown immensely in popularity in hobbyist and military inventories. The same core mission set from the hobbyists directly relates to modern global military strategy, with priority on short range, low cost, real time aerial imaging and limited modular payloads. These small devices have the added benefits of small cross sections, low heat signatures, and a variety of transmitters to send real-time data over short distances. As with many new technologies, security seems secondary to the goal of reaching the market as soon as viable. Research indicates a growth in exploits and vulnerabilities, from individual UAV guidance and autopilot controls to the mobile ground station devices that may be as simple as a cellphone application. Even if developers heed calls to improve the security of small UAVs to protect them, consumers are left without meaningful insight into the protections installed when buying new or used UAVs. To date, there is no marketed or accredited risk index for small UAVs, but similar realms of traditional Aircraft operation, Information Technologies, Cyber-Physical Systems, and Cyber Insurance give insight to significant factors required for future small UAV risk assessment. In this research, four fields of risk frameworks are analyzed to determine their applicability to UAV security risk and key components that must be analyzed by a formal UAV framework. This analysis demonstrates that no adjoining field’s framework can be directly applied without significant loss of fidelity and that further research is required to score the cyber risks of UAVs, along with potential objectives and avenues for then creation of a new framework.

Pages: 66 to 75

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2020. Used with permission.

Publication date: June 30, 2020

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2636