{"id":20781,"date":"2018-10-18T12:36:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T16:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/statescoop.scpnewsgrp.com\/federal-officials-say-drones-present-an-emergent-cybersecurity-risk\/"},"modified":"2021-09-03T12:48:57","modified_gmt":"2021-09-03T16:48:57","slug":"federal-officials-say-drones-present-an-emergent-cybersecurity-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/statescoop.com\/federal-officials-say-drones-present-an-emergent-cybersecurity-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal officials say drones present an emergent cybersecurity risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Discussions about the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in U.S. airspace have long revolved around privacy concerns and hazards to public safety. But federal officials are increasingly turning their attention to the potential cybersecurity threats posed by increased drone use. <\/p>\n

In a panel discussion during DC CyberTalks 2018 <\/a> in Washington on Thursday, a Federal Aviation Administration official said drones present equal parts opportunity and challenge, and that the essential governance of the technology is being forged across the various levels of government right now. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are dealing, truly, with an aviation asset that is unlike anything else,\u201d said Angela Stubblefield, deputy associate administrator for the FAA\u2019s Security and Hazardous Materials Safety office. <\/p>\n

Congress approved the FAA\u2019s five-year reauthorization bill earlier this month. In addition to its funding provisions, the legislation establishes new guidelines for drone use, including new allowances for the federal government to remove potentially dangerous aircraft from the air, and a new framework for future governance. But many of the details of how drones will be governed are yet to be established. <\/p>\n

Stubblefield said drawing the line between the federal and state and local levels of government is a work in progress and will be refined in the coming months and years. As practical applications for drones grow, she said the FAA will be privy to a growing pool of data to determine the appropriate levels of authority across the various levels of government. <\/p>\n

Past attempts to breach drone systems required the sophistication of a nation-state or another well-funded or well-resourced entity, Stubblefield said, but such efforts today are becoming cheaper and easier to accomplish, presenting a heightened risk. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to think not just about trying to isolate systems from an access perspective but [have an eye] on the air as well,\u201d Stubblefield said. <\/p>\n

State and local government agencies are increasingly launching their own drone programs or outsourcing for drones to either gather new imagery data that was previously unavailable \u2014 such as scans of built infrastructure, like roads and bridges \u2014 or prohibitively expensive when gathered by traditional aircraft. Drones are taking off in a growing number of public safety jurisdictions; California fire agencies turned to drones <\/a> this summer to take 360-degree photographs of towns heavily affected by a series of fires that scorched hundreds of thousands of acres. <\/p>\n

Stubblefield said the use cases to use drones to remove humans from potentially unsafe scenarios are \u201cvirtually limitless.\u201d <\/p>\n

This growing use by public safety presents a natural cybersecurity challenge, said Stephen \u201cHerbie\u201d Hancock, director of special projects for the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s Science and Technology Directorate. Emergency responders like firefighters generally aren\u2019t interested in where their drones are sending data \u2014 they\u2019re interested in putting out fires, Hancock said. <\/p>\n

He continued that mitigating cyberthreats presented by drones is a major challenge because drones were designed to keep a low profile while collecting various types of information, whether it\u2019s visual images or data packets flying out of a Wi-Fi router. Spy drones don\u2019t have giant antennas or any other conspicuous characteristics, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you find it?\u201d Hancock said. \u201cThat\u2019s difficult. Really, really difficult.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Government is now dividing the task of managing new threats they expect to arrive from the sky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":205,"featured_media":20782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable_grayscale_images":true,"grayscale_contrast":0,"sponsored_content":false,"display_author_bio":true,"story_type":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20649,4677,20646],"tags":[4,51,69,94,4992,16536],"people":[],"special-report":[],"authors":[4696],"class_list":["post-20781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-emerging-tech","category-state","category-cybersecurity","tag-tech-news","tag-emerging-technology","tag-drones-uas-uav","tag-department-of-homeland-security","tag-dc-cybertalks","tag-cybersecurity","author-colin-wood"],"yoast_head":"\nFederal 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