When you work in the aviation industry, you know that airports provide the world with critical infrastructure. Airports offer essential services for millions of people and businesses alike. As a result, you’ve probably noticed that they’re main targets for a myriad of cyberattacks. These attacks can be propagated for financial reasons, or to usurp power over your country’s crucial infrastructure. In addition, a hostile attack on any country can disrupt major national and international transport networks. The thing is, your primary focus as an executive in the aviation industry has traditionally been the safety of your passengers. Yet, a cyber-threats can cause devastating impact on a vast range of systems that can affect your industry directly and indirectly. For instance, personal data can be at risk during a ransomware attack.
This is why it’s crucial for you to understand the potential risks in airports and how they impact your role. Moreover, it’s important for you to know effective ways to avoid such risk.
What is Risk Management?
First thing first, what is risk management? Simply put, running an airport needs you to have risk management practices in place to ensure that you conduct the necessary operations for it to be profitable. These are assessments that you should put in place to identify and avoid any potentially hazardous issues. If you suspect that your job and its information technology infrastructure is jeopardized, a risk assessment framework (RAF) to prioritize dealing with this risk is necessary. Thereafter, it’s easy for your Chief Risk Officer to conduct your assessment process. This assessment can be summarized by the following steps:
- Identify the hazards that carry the most risk.
- Create awareness of your hazards to help identify the assets that you should prioritize. (For instance, your IT systems.)
- Evaluate risk. It should help you to determine how the risk can impact the aviation industry. Moreover, in this step, you should develop effective measures to reduce or eliminate these risks.
- Keep a record of your findings. A concise record should help you to prevent similar risks in the future.
- Review and update your findings. Things are constantly changing. This includes the types of risks that your airport is prone to. There are useful tools that you should consider using to stay up to date with your findings.
Risk Management in IT
Now that you have a background of what risk management entails, you should understand it from a technological perspective. The thing is, the concept is similar to any other organization. However, the main purpose of your technology risk management is the mitigation of risks that can cause compliance issues and critical security incidents. When you manage an airport, you should be aware of how much data can be at cybersecurity risk. This is why your highly trained IT support should be equipped with an RAF to provide effective measures. Additionally, you should have a clear framework to ensure that your team knows the steps to follow. It’s important for you to note that an IT risk assessment consists of two phases: intelligence analysis and threat analysis. Both of these phases require you to do the following:
- Have a detailed account of your assets and estimate any damage to their loss;
- Know which aviation operations depend on your assets;
- Understand how likely the threats are to impact your assets.
As someone who is in the aviation industry, you should know that it continues to be an appealing industry for many attacks. As technology evolves, the threat of global terrorism does the same. As a result, it’s crucial for you to know how to identify and avoid these risks before they cause a great deal of damage. Even the International Civil Aviation Organization emphasizes the need for robust protection of assets and personal data by management in airports.
What Are the Benefits of Technology Risk Assessment in Airports?
Using risk management software has become a norm nowadays. How many times have you had to delay a flight due to technical issues? It’s unfortunate that there are always technical issues that you should expect when it comes to the safety management of your aviation systems. Yet, your customers’ assets and data shouldn’t be one of your concerns. The thing is when you have a crucial role in the aviation industry, securing data assets should remain a high priority. This is why you should be aware of these benefits of your IT risk assessment:
Knowing your Risk Profile
Once you’ve identified and prioritized your risks, you can easily allocate your resources adequately. Your detailed risk profile can help you to source your threat. This is essential to find out why the risk exists. Most importantly, it enables you to know if the risk will materialize, and whether it requires further analysis or not.
Identifying your Vulnerabilities
It’s important to use a method that can eliminate any vulnerability. For instance, you should consider evaluating your security from your attacker’s perspective. At times this can involve using an ethical hacker who can thoroughly test your protocols and security control systems.
Keeping Inventory of your IT and Data Assets
Your airport has a wide range of assets and information that can be at risk. To ensure that your role is prepared for any threats, it’s essential to have a strategic solution for your IT security. Your IT risk assessment should help you to determine your priority assets and software.
Reducing Costs
The thing is conducting a risk assessment can be an expensive operation. Sometimes your company doesn’t have the financial resources to eliminate each risk. However, with technology, you should estimate your risks accurately to balance your costs against your benefits.
Complying with Regulations
Lastly, the Federal Aviation Administration has a string of regulations that you should comply with. Sometimes conducting a regular risk assessment is a significant component of complying with regulatory standards. Failure to comply with certain requirements can be a costly burden for your business.
Start Avoiding Risk Today With the Help of MIBAR
In summary, having a clear and effective risk assessment framework is important. It’s the best way for your team to strengthen the cybersecurity and to lower any risk. This is why we believe that our network and infrastructure management services are ideal for you.
The MIBAR team provides your business with database solutions and core operating systems that potentially eliminate any risk from threats that can affect your data assets and other infrastructure. Learn more about MIBAR’s airport terminal management solution today by contacting us or checking out our informative airport terminal management webinar.
Additional Resources
4 Challenges Facing Today’s Airports…Solved with Technology
Airport Terminal Management: Ramping up for a Return
The Path Forward: A Terminal Manager’s Playbook to Create a Soaring 2020s
