Drafting a Cybersecurity Standard for Outer Space Missions: On Critical Infrastructure, China, and the Indispensability of a Global Inclusive Approach
| Published date | 01 September 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/23477970241261432 |
| Author | Riccardo Vecellio Segate |
| Date | 01 September 2024 |
Research Article
Drafting a Cybersecurity
Standard for Outer Space
Missions: On Critical
Infrastructure, China,
and the Indispensability
of a Global Inclusive
Approach
Riccardo Vecellio Segate1
Abstract
Despite limited progress within international institutions, the need for articulat-
ing a regulatory framework for cyber operations in outer space is becoming a
pressing concern. One precondition for regulation is to share cybersecurity and
outer-space common terminology that can inform the negotiation of standards,
policies and laws. While the UN Institute for Disarmament Research has recently
issued a baseline policy glossary, binding technical definitions are missing, and the
lack of a binding international cybersecurity regime adds to the obsolescence of
a binding outer-space regime tracing back to half a century ago. As the IEEE SA
embarks on the drafting of the first-ever technical standard for cybersecure-by-
design outer-space missions, scoping and conceptual challenges abound. Techni-
cal standards are US-centred, non-binding, engineering-intensive exercises, where
lawyers and Asian jurisdictions are only marginally involved; nevertheless, as
China’s framework for cybersecurity is refined and its involvement in outer-space
policing deepens, its disengagement from Western-driven standard-setting bodies
appears unsustainable. Drawing on the specific challenge of defining what makes a
cyber system ‘mission-critical’, I expose the necessity to examine how domestic
cybersecurity laws from a diverse range of States identify ‘critical’ information in-
frastructure. Generalising therefrom, I advocate a jurisdictionally inclusive process
that combines American supremacy in technical standard-setting for outer-space
missions with Chinese normative contributions to cybersecurity regulation, in-
cluding on data localisation and mandatory multilevel cyber-hygiene requirements.
I further argue that involving legal experts from a diverse range of jurisdictions and
Journal of Asian Security
and International Affairs
11(3) 345–375, 2024
© The Author(s) 2024
Article reuse guidelines:
in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india
DOI: 10.1177/23477970241261432
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1 Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen, Netherlands
Corresponding author:
Riccardo Vecellio Segate, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen, 9700 AB,
Netherlands.
E-mail: r.vecellio.segate@rug.nl
346Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs 11(3)
sociolegal cultures may enhance the global reception of standardisation outputs,
thus securing higher degrees of voluntary compliance therewith. This could foster
cooperation and promote regional and global satellite cybersecurity.
Keywords
China–West relations, critical information infrastructure, cybersecurity for outer
space missions, IEEE SA, system and mission criticality, technical standardisation
Introduction
With the outer space (OS) gaining momentum as a terrain for both civilian and
military activity, its global security becomes increasingly topical. At present,
no cybersecurity framework is immediately applicable to outer-space missions,
let alone globally; the first embryonic attempts to devise such a framework are
either standing on the high-level-overview side, or facing the hurdle of integrat-
ing OS concepts and lexicon with those from cybersecurity. To exemplify, if one
needed to decide what makes a cyber system in OS ‘critical’, they could scrutinise
‘criticality’ under OS customs or ‘critical information infrastructure’ (CII) under
cybersecurity: both would matter, and the most appropriate synthesis would need
to be attained (Ear et al., 2024; Jakobson, 2013; Pecharich et al., 2016). The
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (IEEE
SA)’s P3349—Space System Cybersecurity Working Group can be currently
deemed the most notable effort to reconcile OS and cybersecurity expertise
towards the standardisation of secure cyber systems for OS missions. Initiated in
Fall 2023 in response to a hybrid governmental-academic call for action issued
by United States (US), Australian, United Kingdom (UK) and European Union
(EU) researchers and policymakers (Falco et al., 2022), this process is articulated
along the traditional OS systems’ classification—space segment, user segment
and ground segment (Casaril & Galletta, 2024, p. 3; Kodheli et al., 2021, p. 78),
plus link segment and integration layer—reflected in subcommittees.
Despite the praiseworthiness of this venture, it might still be perceived as
overly technical and not truly global by policymakers and regulators, especially
outside the Atlantic. If the latter are not invited to trust the process, this standard-
isation’s outcome might even stand technically optimal, but it risks being dis-
missed or sidelined by those who could ‘socialise’ and support its implementation.
Without their endorsement, it might not be widely adopted; it might equally fail to
persuade lawmakers, arbitrators and judges to integrate it into their laws, arbitral
awards and judgements, thus crediting it legal standing as a source of law.
In fact, technical standards in this arena routinely fail to articulate technology
as a policy-oriented—as opposed to merely technical—compromise to engage
powerful players such as China and to embed technical solutions within appropri-
ate policy expectations beyond the US-UK-EU axis. In drafting a standard for
cyber-secure OS missions, one should indeed refer to cybersecurity frameworks
as they have blossomed in recent years across the globe, and should identify key
tenets that would make it likelier for the standard to be accepted in those regions,
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