NCyTE Monthly Meeting: Autonomous and Semi-Autonomous Systems

hello um good morning everybody my name is Mike Singletary I work for the national cyber security training and education center we're located here in Bellingham Washington just just south of the the Canadian border north of Seattle Washington um I'm also the uh also work for the cyber security Center of Excellence for Washington State we do that for half of my time but I want to welcome everybody here to our monthly Insight membership meeting and you don't have to be a member to join of course and thank you for attending today's topic is autonomous and semi-autonomous systems um since we have folks from all over the United States we've been talking to weather about weather please introduce yourself in the chat I see somebody's already done that and put the you know let us know what temperature you're encountering today it's 44 degrees and raining here in Bellingham Washington um during the presentation please keep your microphone on mute so that we we will be recording as I said and that will help with the recording use the chat to ask questions there will be some time at the end of the presentation for you to ask questions and after today's meeting uh the recording will be posted on the web um early next week I want to bring your attention to our next cyber security our Insight monthly meeting which is going to be cyber security apprenticeship panel that's going to be on May 19th at 9 00 a.m um our all of our uh Insight monthly meetings are the third Friday of the month at 9 00 a.m Pacific Time next month we have a cyber security apprenticeship panel our moderator is going to be Dr Costas torregas and we have panelists from the community college Toby West and we also have Richard Braden from CompTIA and Kimberly Hague and Abigail Allen both from the U.S Department of Labor um this is going to be a really good I think informative Workshop there's a lot of uh industry and businesses who are hiring um I.T and cyber Security Professionals

apprenticeships is one way for students to get some experience and we know sometimes it's hard for especially students in community colleges to obtain and then the following month on June 16th we're doing a max power lab demo we have Christopher Simpson who's coming from the National University he has 34 learning object objects out on the Clark Dot Center so if you're not familiar with the labs that are available on Clark Dot Center Christopher is going to go through his uh his learning collection his objectives and collection that he has on clark.center it's a great resource for faculty who are looking for cyber security curriculum Labs that he's going to demonstrate with try Hackney and on the freelance not the ones that that constantly think s for that clarification and then uh for some of you you're not already in site members I want to encourage you to go ahead and join become a member it's easy you fill out the form um and we we sign you up um you get access to free curriculum you get access to our membership meetings we invite you to attend other conferences we have travel stipends available for some conferences so there's a lot of benefits that we have for for becoming a member and we might invite you to give a presentation in our monthly meeting so and just a little bit about our membership we have 450 414 member institutions right now across 45 States and one U.S territory Puerto Rico and right now about 7 500 contacts individual contacts so we we do um we're also if you have something that you want to put out there we use our social media and our um we have our newsletter that goes out monthly so we we can throw that out there for you well there's our benefits we also have the center cyber security centers of academic Excellence support I want to mention that I heard somebody talking about that earlier um and of course we have all of the social media feeds if you're not already signed up for a newsletter that's our link don't worry about writing any of these links down I'm going to send them into an email after the meeting with that I'm going to turn it over to Stephen Miller to introduce our speaker today thanks Mike and welcome everyone to Our member Maitland for insight uh I'm uh the director uh and professor of Eastern New Mexico University and Ruidoso New Mexico where Branch Community College and I'm a co-pi for insight uh so today our our guest speaker is Zachary nicklin and he's going to cover the anonymous and semi-anonymous systems uh so Zach I'm going to just turn it over to you let you take over thank you yeah I appreciate it Stephen and Mike for for inviting me here and allowing me to do this um mind if uh can I share my screen so I can bring up the presentation all right are we seeing the presentation screen okay perfect so uh so again as Mike said my name is Zach nicklin I am a co-pi for the national Center for autonomous Technologies uh I also serve as the program manager and primary instructor for all unmanned aircraft systems programs at Northland Community and Technical College in frigid Northwest Minnesota um I'm envious of all you folks in the chat and I will ask you to please stop rubbing it in for me uh they're here's some cold and snowy here um but uh thank you all for joining us today I know that uh you know I was asked to talk about autonomous Technologies and and some of the roles of cyber security in that and my thought process went hey you know you folks are the experts on on cyber security uh but maybe you don't know as much about the autonomous Technologies and semi-autonomous Technologies uh the roles they play in our society or will play uh when we talk about the future uh you know the emerging Technologies um and then just talking about the different ways that they may communicate whether it's uh you know with each other or with a human um so that's kind of where my presentation is going to be going to be focused today um I'm very much okay with folks uh asking questions when they have questions otherwise there will be some time at the end so I will try and monitor the chat a little bit as I go and uh and see if I can address some of those questions kind of as we go as well um so uh with that I will I will get started here so really when we talk about these autonomous Technologies again uh not a lot of folks really have the the Insight uh on you know how they're used and and what they all consist of and I'm going to give you folks an overview of quite a few systems today or what types of systems and uh you know how they operate uh what they do uh their their essential job functions there uh and then like I said and then we'll talk about uh you know how cyber security plays plays a role in that um so first one up here we have advanced traditional fixed and rotary Wing aircraft uh you know typically when we talk about uh your traditional aircraft you know we we all recognize I think that there's uh they have autopilot systems on it and you know these autopilots they they range to different levels uh some are simple Wing levelers to where it just makes sure that the aircraft stays in you know uh straight and forward flight right um these days though they're becoming more and more advanced so for instance some adults as aircraft uh as a as a pilot puts in a discrepancy in their log on their computer that automatically gets sent down to the Delta operations center and so they're monitoring this type of stuff in real time setting up uh you know maintenance actions to happen when the aircraft lands or scheduling maintenance uh you know at a specific facility uh if it's a much larger type job on top of that the the traditional autopilot is actually giving way a little bit uh and I say that in it's it's becoming more all-encompassing so if we look at Airbus for instance uh airbuses uh a350-1000 uh just recently in the last couple years went through it's all its testing phases for autonomous taxi takeoff and landing and when you couple that with the typical autopilot that you know is traditionally in charge for most of your flights uh if you don't know that I'm sorry to maybe give you a a little less than a warm fuzzy feeling in your heart uh that the the typical commercial airline pilot does not hand flying that aircraft the whole time uh it's very much a job of the computer on board that's doing that so coupling that with the the taxi the takeoff and and the landing uh you know it's it's all computer controlled it all has to be programmed there has to be access to it and there has to be communication with it so whether it's between uh the the ground and the aircraft or or the computers on board um you know it's very very much computer controlled moving over to spacecraft here uh I I think we're all familiar with with spacecraft being unmanned typically a lot of the times right when we talk about communication satellites and and those type of stuff uh the exploration type missions where we send off and and unmanned probe out to to Saturn or you know out past the edge of our our solar system um you know that's it's very much unmanned and it's really only been you know in the last couple of decades that we've really been focusing again on man flights uh outside of the Apollo missions right or where the space station itself um so with these systems they're they're very much autonomous right we we launch them we hit a button and any control that's that's available and happens happens from down on the ground with the aircraft sometimes you know hundreds of thousands of miles away or more and so there's there's data links that are a part of that right we've got to be able to to send this data or these command and control uh you know feeds between the aircraft uh or the spacecraft up in in space and then and then down on the ground uh we're getting more involved in these missions right you hear you know Elon Musk talking about missions to Mars uh we've got NASA talking about I believe it's their Artemis missions uh where they're going to be resending people you know up to the Moon again uh but but all of these have some ability of of control and communication you know down to the ground and it there that's susceptible right anytime that we that we have a uh you know a message or communication a control or command sent through airspace or through the space then you know it's it's susceptible to interception it's susceptible to jamming and it's susceptible to somebody uh jumping on and and getting a free ride for their own command and Control Data so um autonomous Maritime Vehicles you see these in a lot of different functions so when we talk about uh even the very very large uh cargo haulers so they have the big you know 20 ton ceu uh containerized shipping right um most of those are are very heavily computer controlled you know even when they have folks on board and now we're talking about unmanned uh cargo ships that'll be able to to cross the Atlantic with you know hundreds of thousands of tons of cargo uh some of that cargo being hazardous materials and then being able to uh you know dock on the other end uh further we're talking about Coast Guard patrols that are using this type of stuff in order to do basic uh you know Maritime patrols whether it's you know search and rescue uh coastal defense uh that type of thing drug interdiction um now granted we're gonna need people as a part of those but these autonomous Maritime vehicles are very much a part of it uh when you look at what the the Navy's doing the Navy's using them to to find mines uh to be able to find you know enemy submarines and things like that in the area uh so it's it's more and more we're relying on this technology uh you know throughout our life here uh you can see in the next one here we got the driverless cargo trucks uh maybe you saw a little bit of something about it uh you know from Tesla um not sure how well that one's worked out but there are multiple organizations from from Volvo and Peterbilt and and all those big names they're talking about these driverless cargo truck bucks now these driverless cargo trucks we can find uh you know more and more on our roads they've been doing cross-country testing uh where they they actually have a Chase vehicle or they'll have somebody sitting up in the cab not touching the controls and just monitoring uh but as this technology becomes proofed and becomes you know tried true and trusted um you know we're gonna see more and more of this well all of these semis they're they're carrying goods sometimes very expensive Goods sometimes they're carrying Hazmat materials uh further as more and more of these get on the road the idea is they're supposed to start talking to each other on top of just being able to sense the road with its with its own sensors but being able to actually speak to other cars on the road and other trucks on the road and allow for separation so you know when we talk about the passenger vehicles and I've got one on the next screen here that we'll talk a little bit about more uh but you know these these vehicles they're they're covered in sensors right and all these sensors just talking back to a computer it's telling it you know is it still in its Lane is there another car and what would traditionally be a a blind spot right uh I don't know if we can call it a blind spot anymore if it's covered by a sensor and there's no person to miss seeing something there but um but it and you know so it's got these sensors and it's you know lidar and proximity sensors you've got camera sensors where it's it's using Ai and machine learning to be able to categorize uh the the type of objects that it's see to be able to judge risk right is this object likely to move in the path of travel and then having that vehicle automatically respond to it you know you have a kid kick a soccer ball into the middle of the road uh you know having the the driverless vehicle understand that you know a there's an object in the road and B there might be somebody following that right because we've all seen in the news accidents of that type where you know the kids just you know just running into the road not really thinking to go grab their ball or some other object and so um you know all of this is happening at once and it's and it's bringing in all this information but on top of that they're also talking about using things like 5G to be able to again have constant communication with this uh to to allow some operator back at a dispatch or an overall control center to be able to locate all the vehicles do basic monitoring of of systems and system Health uh but again that that opens up another area whether we're talking about an actual an actual hack and I apologize again not a cyber security guy so that might not even be the right time we're looking at um you know but actually getting into the computer systems and and being able to send signals to tell it to do something that it shouldn't do but also uh being able to to fool the individual sensors on the air or on the vehicle itself uh so for instance when we talk about like GPS spoofing uh that type of stuff we've got to be able to to secure this uh to make it safe for everyone uh because frankly especially when we talk about new and emerging Technologies it's it's really the news reports that that fully affect the public right and you don't get widespread news reports about hey we did a great test we're at Joe for A Thousand Miles and and didn't hit anything and stayed in its Lane and did exactly what I was supposed to do but the first time somebody gets hit or there's some other type of accident uh think about like Tesla's self-driving feature uh where folks were were not following the manufacturer's recommendations and we're actually letting the vehicle not only drive itself but you know reading a book or doing something else like taking a nap uh and wind up getting an accident that's what everybody hears about and and when that type of thing happens you know the the immediate negative publicity will have a huge effect on the adoption of this even though overall once we get some of these Technologies out there it's going to provide for safer operations the reality is that when we look at at semia accidents and car accidents uh almost all of them are human error you know human error being that that one thing that we really don't have a lot of control of because everybody is different and and some people don't pay as much attention as they can or as I should so having these vehicles all talking to each other will eventually make things much safer um however we have to make sure that that all of the command and control links all the functionality of the vehicle uh is not susceptible to any um I I guess I wouldn't say anyway but any any person trying to use it for its own means in a way that it shouldn't be we'll say um Advanced Air Mobility is is another one that's being talked about more and more these days um you know I think everybody's heard about uh you know uas or small uas uh everybody knows somebody with a little quadcopter uh but with this Advanced Air mobility and an urban air Mobility which is the UAM portion of it uh is we're really looking at kind of you know air taxi services and there are companies out there that are that are currently uh working through the certification process to get these out there and the idea is is that when you're commuting from a suburban area into an urban area uh if any of you folks live in uh you know those type of areas and make that Community you understand that rush hour traffic can can be you know really really extend the amount of time that you spend in your vehicle and the amount of time that you spend on your commutes in the morning and in the afternoon Advanced Air mobility and Urban Air Mobility are looking at ways to reduce uh that traffic right and it's gonna it's gonna help in two ways one those with access to to Urban Air Mobility or Advanced Air Mobility uh type services will obviously not have their car on the road so as this guy becomes maybe a little bit more congested the ground will also become a little bit less congested during those so it's it's kind of a win-win for everybody if it all works out uh further we're looking at uh you know ambulance type Services um you know how many times do you get an ambulance that that's stuck in traffic and I know you know they've got their lights and sirens and everybody's supposed to get out of the way but I think we've all you know spent some time on the road and and seen instances where traffic was so bad that the the ambulance is creeping along you know and waiting on folks to get out of their way uh or or you have folks not paying attention and then sitting in their way um if we could dispatch an ambulance that could land in somebody's front yard and get them loaded up and and back to the hospital you know where we'd be decreasing travel time not only to get on the scene so you can get your response faster you can get your your immediate aid faster but also getting you to a you know Trauma Center or something like that it's necessary uh you know much faster as well so as we talk about this and and uh you know it's not only in an urban environment that they're talking about doing that they're even talking about uh small Regional jumps uh so if you've got a there's plenty of commuter aircraft out there that you know they take 30 to 45 minute flights and it's fairly common up to smaller airports uh you know Advanced Air Mobility would be able to uh you know decrease the amount of those uh or I'm sorry they'll be able to to get there faster uh burning less fuels and right now a lot of these systems the way they're testing them they're testing them with pilots in them you know so as they go through and they get certification through the FAA they're getting certified as a piloted aircraft uh but all the initial tests on them are all done with nobody in the cockpit they're all done autonomously they're unmanned or remotely um and the idea is is they eventually that's that's their goal is to be able to offer these services in a way that doesn't take a pilot on board uh with the current state of regulations around uh you know aircraft in our airspace from the FAA the Federal Aviation Administration uh you have to jump through a whole lot more oops to get to there so right now these companies are are doing it in a way where they put a pilot in the seats but the pilot may not again actually be flying just like our traditional commercial planes um so they'd be relying on the computers on board on the data link from a control center uh to to tell that aircraft where to go or when to go there um coupled with of course onboard sensors to be able to sense and avoid other other aircraft um and I was talking about with the trucks they're also talking about with the the Advanced Air Mobility with the ability for these different air vehicles to talk to each other and allow for self-separation so they would actually determine themselves you know do I need to turn slightly left or right do I need to gain altitude or lose altitude uh jointly with this other aircraft in their airspace to determine the the best way to avoid any type of collisions or near-misses so again very very heavy on the technology very highly heavily reliant on wireless communication in order to uh either take direction or provide updates um moving forward some more we have the autonomous underwater vehicles uh all shapes and sizes all types of missions everything from uh the fiber optic line inspection uh so if you're I'm fairly certain this group is aware but you know we're we're not connected via satellite to everybody most of our connections that go from from one continent to another rely on on heavy fiber optic lines uh that are laid across the bottom of the of the ocean or other cables laid across the bottom of the ocean and so these type air of vehicles are used to inspect those sometimes they're used to to move and adjust their placement to lay them down in the first place and ensure they're being laid down uh correctly we use them to image the bottom to determine the best places to lay these cables and that's just one of the jobs on top of you know we've got uh you know oil lines and and out there in for instance the the gulf you've got all of the oil wells that are out there with a lot of the infrastructure for those being underneath the surface they rely on vehicles like these to conduct inspections and let us know when we need to send down a team to fix it as technology has been progressing some of these systems are even providing them those repairs themselves so there are autonomous welding machines uh that would go down and and be able to weld underwater or weld parts of ships back together um we use them for exploration the military uses stuff like this heavily again for for mine detection uh for subsurface detection of enemy vehicles uh that may be hiding under the water we use them for scientific research you know where's the where's the thermocline at how's the how's the salinity in this section are there any type of pollutants uh that can be identified um so these there's many many uses for autonomous underwater vehicles uh we we use them here in Minnesota and other places in in freshwater environments uh mapping in the bottoms of lakes uh being able to make sure that our waterways have sufficient clearance for the type of vessels that go through there so they they're like I said used extensively many many different ways and you know all of this is done typically with the underwater ones it's not a live connection typically uh those are pre-programmed and sent on their way but there are ways that you can communicate with it and get updates from it um it's not maybe as uh as robust as communication through the air because the the environment to the water doesn't necessarily allow for that but being able to to hijack control of some of these uh especially when you think about one welding underwater on an oil rig I mean there can be a huge environmental impact to to the wrong character getting a hold of something like that and being able to to use it for their means with uas we're talking unmanned aircraft systems again I think folks are fairly familiar with the small stuff um you know the little DJI Phantoms and and things like that that are being used for Real Estate pictures uh but these days look at what's going on over in Ukraine with small uas they're using commercial off-the-shelf aircraft modifying them and basically arming them with Munitions that can be dropped on on enemy soldiers um there's nothing to say that this type of stuff couldn't be done with the aircraft that we have here and that are used uh you know you can go to Best Buy and pick some of those up um further the aircraft themselves some of them either have fuel they have LiPO batteries which are highly flammable they can be you know packed with explosives that type of stuff so making sure that we have a good command and control link for that type of stuff even the little small stuff that we think of as as almost toys you know is is a very important concept that frankly I don't think we're doing the best job with as we look at larger unmanned aircraft systems right now most of those typically tend to be in the dod realm um there are some outliers you know NASA NOAA the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uh you know they're both using very large unmanned aircraft to do simple things like um you know Imaging the Arctic and looking for the thickness of the ice sheets uh flying into hurricanes and and getting sensor data of the hurricane um you know whether it's barometric pressure wind speeds all that fun stuff uh rather than sending in people but primarily they're being used by the Department of Defense and I think we've all seen on the news you know the the Predators and Reaper type aircraft you know the their armed aircraft 60-foot wingspan full of fuel got combustion engines on them and you know the dod does a little bit better job I think on the on the Cyber realm and protecting those data links but as the FAA starts opening up the airspace to some of this larger stuff so if you're if you're not aware right now the only commercial operations uh done in our national airspace system with uas are relegated to small uas which is under 55 pounds or very rare exceptions um the idea from the FAA is that they're they're slowly integrating starting with the small stuff but they're talking about possible new regulations coming out as early as September that's going to allow heavier aircraft to be able to fly Beyond visual line of sight uh so right now again with the small stuff it's you're supposed to stay within visual line of sight which means you know a little bit better when your aircraft is not acting the way it's supposed to as we push it out Beyond visual line of sight you become heavily reliant on the data that the aircraft is sending back to you to determine where it is whether it's on Mission whether it's at the altitude that it's supposed to be um and then we have to trust that the information we're getting back from the aircraft is correct otherwise we could cause issues you know between other aircraft between you know uh God forbid and unmanned aircraft and and airliner or something like that um so that that becomes less trustworthy when we don't spend as much time securing those data links and with the small uas the data links really are just not as secure as they should be but again as the FAA opens up this airspace and we start talking about uh agricultural crop dusters for instance um you know you have to get a special license to be a crop duster uh in order to apply chemicals and and part of that is uh the the background checks and making sure that you're you're doing the right thing uh being able to weaponize a traditional crop duster that can hold hundreds of gallons of whatever's put in it you know we typically see fertilizer and and pesticides things like that um but there's you know there's nothing to say that a bad actor could not you know fill it with something else and now they don't even have to sit in the cockpit and and fly the mission themself um they can do it from you know an anonymous computer terminal anywhere in the world using satellite systems um so as these as these systems start to to proliferate and and and become more ubiquitous within within our national airspace system uh there there's going to need to be a I guess a deeper dive into the cyber security aspect and and to make sure that we secure those command and control links making sure that we secure uh the data both going to and from these aircrafts I'm only in the listen mode and go to dudes game what's that where's the boots sorry Tom I think you're I think you're unmuted there I thought you were asking a question at first there no I apologize yeah no worries so um Luca is our large unmanned cargo aircraft um so if you think about the um let's see what was it there was uh the Tom Hanks movie where he got uh Castaway that was the word uh so you look at a big FedEx uh cargo plane essentially flying between places like China and America uh you know most of the flight is conducted over water you know where there's there's no real population there and what population there is transient on ships um these type of aircrafts are essentially wasted space for when it comes to people right we'll put a crew in these in these aircraft for these long-haul flights excuse me you know that that crew could be you know four people or more uh in order to to provide crew rest um so we've got the the seats for crew we've got all the facilities for crew whether it comes the the kitchen and the refrigerator in the in the restroom uh then we talk about the life support systems for those crew so we got the the oxygen systems and things like that and then all the control Hardware uh that's in those you know if we were to take all of those out of your typical uh FedEx long-haul flight uh there'd be there'd be hundreds and hundreds of pounds uh that we could either add more fuel or add more cargo do the same job much more efficiently uh there are organizations such as as FedEx and UPS uh looking at making some of these systems unmanned for that specific reason um again then you you've got some some added problems there right when we're flying from from China to the US or any other Nation to to the US with an aircraft that's capable of of holding tons of cargo uh into our airspace or within them as they fly into our airspace um so when it comes to that you know I think most of us remember or at least know about 911 right those are typical passenger airplanes uh that were heavily loaded with fuel um and it took a person on board to to actually you know cause that incident right they they took over the aircraft and then manually crashed it um it becomes a whole lot easier if all I have to do is get a data link I don't have to convince somebody to to get on that airplane and physically crash it uh and cause a lot of damage um so again security not just uh physical security of the aircraft and the the air uh airports that were using things like that are very important um but even being able to get a hold of the command and control links to be able to take it over and be able to command that aircraft to do something like that or or you know God forbid worse um you know it's it's a very important thing that we need to keep in mind and we need to figure out ways that we really are able to secure these systems and make sure that that they provide the benefit that we we know they can right that's the reason why we're actually why we're going after these systems why we're looking at introducing them and making them you know it's because they're going to provide a benefit to society in some way shape or form and if it doesn't provide a benefit we wouldn't be doing it but the integration of these type of things always uh you know introduces a an ability from a bad actor to be able to you know do things they shouldn't be doing with it so last couple of examples I'll give you here here's our driverless passenger vehicles and I kind of mentioned this a little bit with the trucks I threw some of the sensors or took a picture that that shows some of the sensors there um you know it's it's it's lidar it's proximity sensors it's a lidar light detection and ranging um it's it's using uh camera systems it's using AI everything on these systems of any of the ones that I've talked about they're they're very heavily computer controlled and they're reliant on that computer and Those sensors both the internal sensors to to sense the state of the vehicle or the external sensors to to basically be able to understand its environment um all heavily computer controlled uh as we talked again about the the driverless passenger vehicles uh as we've been talking about smart cities things like that what they are talking about is is these vehicles being able to talk freely with each other which is great because then they know the distance between each other they can share information about road conditions um you know if you think about a car coming from from one way and you're going the other way uh that car can send over information to your car about road conditions ahead uh that you otherwise wouldn't know until you got much closer and that that all sounds great it all sounds a way to make things safer but what if you have a bad actor in that car coming towards you and it and it sends you information to say that the road is clear and dry ahead when in actuality there's there's black ice in parts of it or or there's snowy or water covered you know whatever it may be there's there's a chance that you can you know cause issues and cause loss of life and so again the the cyber security aspect is is going to be very very important I know with with small uas there's there's been a big push lately about moving away from Chinese products and I'm not sure if you folks have been following any of that uh but there's been legislation put in place that's uh you know stopping some funding some federal funding from going to those type of uh of aircraft and you know it's all about uh the the aircraft communicating back with servers in China and providing information um you know there's there's kind of a 50 50 mix about what people what folks think about that um you know there's there's definitely a large group that says well you know they've already got spy satellites they've already got people within the country um they've you know there's nothing to stop um you know somebody to go get their their license for uh being able to fly a small uas and being able to capture some of this information themselves and physically send it over um the other side is is well let's not make it easier for him right uh I I'd say that a good portion 95 or more of the flights of small uas even those that that are you know manufactured in China and maybe communicating with a server back there uh you know they're not they're not capturing any any novel information you know when I go out and fly the local farmers field and tell them his Craft health you know it's it's the same information that you can get from satellites it's just on the satellites it's it's much more delayed right and maybe not as granular um so again there's there's two ways of thinking when it comes to that uh but the federal government is absolutely uh starting to crack down and find ways to to reduce that type of Reliance but when we look at all a lot of the chips that are used in all of these technology allergies and and you know the the sensors that are used you know a lot of this stuff is really already coming uh from States like or from countries uh like like China so I'm um you know curious to see where things are going to go if we're gonna you know pick up some of the manufacturing ourself and and so that way we can guarantee that it's a little more secure uh but either way I think there's going to be a large role for not only data management but really for cyber security uh and in securing these things from from the beginning to the end right I don't need to take over your drone if I can simply break into the factory that's producing the flight controller for it uh and be able to you know hijack the software at some point that way um industrial Robotics are some things becoming more and more common whether it's you know actually building your car uh by putting panels in the into place and doing welding um there is a there's a company right down the road from us called digicree digikey and if you uh buy electronic components frequently you may know of them uh but they've actually just revolutionized their new product distribution facility uh where almost everything is computer controlled except for the final packing and shipping um so all of the components sit up in racks that you know the the workers there don't even go into uh the an order comes in the system goes and and pulls the buckets with the correct components brings it down to conveyor throughout the entire place where it gets to a person who double checks it packs it boxes it put it back on a conveyor and then it automatically gets scanned and sent to the the correct shipping agency right um this stuff is becoming more and more common whether it's taking inventory uh actually building stuff uh where we we use industrial robotics or robots even on the space station uh they've been testing robots to help out the astronauts up there here so being able again to secure them it becomes a really big deal and the last I wanted to show you just because it was really interesting to me is is autonomous tongues so if you've ever sat on an aircraft and waited for a tug and yeah you got some guy who comes out and you know hooks up a tow bar and and brings the aircraft out from the the gate level um they're they're actually starting to find ways to introduce these autonomous tugs that when the Pilot's ready they simply make a call and a tug will come hook up all by itself and not only pull it out of the gate area but now they're talking about using them to actually taxi to the edge of the runway as well with the idea that the more time they can wait between starting their engine uh you you know you you reduce the carbon footprint you reduce the cost uh even sitting in idle those aircraft don't exactly sip Fuel and so these are you know becoming pretty prevalent uh and I know there's a there's experiments for multiple different companies that are out there using this type of technology to to be able to provide a proof of concept with the idea of of integrating this at airports across the country and across the world um so again that one I just thought was kind of cool but you know if you were to get a hold of one of those and and run it through a line of airport of airplanes at the gate you know obviously it can cause a lot of damage there uh even if it wasn't you know uh if you didn't do it on purpose right you accidentally got into one of those and and and gave it a wrong command that type of thing so um like I said there's there's tons of different Technologies out there whether they're a fully autonomous semi-autonomous that we're integrating and all of them rely on some type of computer interface some kind of data link between the controller whether they're actively controlling or simply monitoring and the vehicle itself uh for everywhere from underwater to on the ground in our airspace or in space stealth and so you folks or the folks that you folks will end up teaching are going to be an important stat gap or firewall to be able to ensure that this stuff remains safe for use and allows for adoption um of this technology that's going to make our lives easier that's going to you know do more dangerous jobs for us keep our folks safer or of course uh you know reduce our our costs as we start uh running businesses so with that I left this in here just because I think aam is about the coolest thing out there um so I gave you some links about some of the stuff going on um I can tell you so if you look at the Joby Aviation S4 this is in the middle of Certification testing they're talking about operations here uh within the next year uh the Jetson one here is actually a flying car whoops is actually a one-person flying car essentially um they can go uh oh I think it's uh 60 or 90 miles an hour for for under ninety thousand dollars uh it's just amazing and then if you look at the very first one the the Italian design Airbus pop-up uh the concept on this one actually is that you've got a chassis that's essentially shareable uh so you can you can drive your vehicle or it can autonomously drive itself to uh to a certain point and then be able to take off and leave the chassis on the ground and then go and and suit itself into another chassis as it as it gets to you know whatever other area that it needed to go to um so like I said just some really cool Concepts that I thought maybe you folks would enjoy uh exploring if it's something that interests you and at that I will I will stop my share and I'll ask if there's any any questions of me um and I'd love to hear your thoughts on cyber security on these and and you know what we can do to make sure that we stay ahead of that curve right uh presentation exactly anyone have any questions uh I have a few but I'm gonna let you all uh ask first if you want if you have a question I have a couple of things I was thinking about as people going through your presentation which uh a lot of that I didn't really know about but some of what I was aware of but the uh I mentioned my son's uh tankers and he's a captain and a pilot on a tanker so they actually have everything computerized and they go through the New York Harbor fully loaded with the gasoline or whatnot so that's a that's a bond going through the the harbor so uh and I'd always ask him I said well what kind of procedures do you have in place like for disaster recovery business continuity as far as can you take over control if if somebody took control of the of the graph itself and so that leads me to are these manufacturers kind of manufacturing these components and whatnot with security in mind or do you have any idea about that I'd say it it really depends uh as you get to the larger stuff and the stuff that's more DOD Centric um you know that's obviously a big requirement from the Department of Defense uh is is addressing that a lot of the commercial stuff though it's it's really not um you know it's it's not hardened in any real way we're relying a lot on relatively untrained folks if you look again at the small uas you know anybody can go to Best Buy and pick one up uh no cyber security training no you know half of them probably don't have any any antivirus software on the cell phone used to control it uh so I I think that uh you know you folks as cyber security folks know that one of the weakest links in that chain typically is the human and you know when we talk about social engineering and fishing and those type of things um you know we are just as susceptible as as the average company and and the average company might spend you know hundreds of thousands or even Millions as we talk about larger companies of dollars on this training to say again stop clicking those links in your email and somebody still does it all the time yeah that's true we actually work with our uh uh with one of our high schools and they do a lot of they they actually uh program the drones and then so what we've been doing with them they uses adreno uh uh computers that they've programmed with C plus plus and then we helped them put the security in the net uh and especially the network type Security in there so they at least understand that these devices need to be secure um and uh and a group of them try to break the other ones which sometimes is not much fun because they destroy the Drone it's still an important concept to get and uh you know it's it's better destroying uh you know 100 or 200 drone in the classroom than it is to to crash a 200 million dollar you know global hawk or something like that so yeah we hooked one in the blinds at the high school in so if anybody have any questions I mean this is really I think a key area I know that there was uh the NSA used to have this uh kind of it was a PR type thing to talk to help students understand how the NSA works and they had this uh it was a day in cyber for the NSA and they had a team of seven uh people that were managing drones that were in Afghanistan and they showed how the strong was hacked into and then it was uh they took control of it and then this team had to get control back uh of the Drone and then how they had to handle all of that so it's pretty interesting they had like a team of seven people met a person that did reverse engineering of course they had a team leader uh they had some expert on the Drone controls and whatnot I mean it was a pretty interesting uh and uh so it kind of brought that attention to to drones that's how we started doing this stuff with the high school was thinking about that we actually showed him that video and they started getting interested in drones success in the chat let's see there's a question in the chat yeah so looking at the the standards that would govern these systems specifically around cyber security um well I can tell you that uh you know ASTM has a lot of stuff on uas uh you know SAE I'm not familiar with the other one that you you call out there um but the the reality is a lot of times when Within These committees that are working on them um they can always use more folks who really understand cyber security uh on these committees so for instance I know ASTM all of the since all the standards that they do are consensus-based standards and so they reach out and they try and get you know smes subject matter experts uh as a part of it but you know sometimes it moves forward without the the amount of representation uh that maybe we'd like to see uh so I I guess I challenge some of you folks uh to to reach out to organizations like astm's uh f-38 committee which is the committee of the uh on unmanned aircraft systems uh standards and uh you know look into either uh the cyber security standards that exist or if there's not reach out to the committee chair and get some going and if anybody would like help with that uh I I know the fight the the folks there at ASTM f-38 and I aptly provide introductions and get new folks in there I think that'd be very important that sounds good yeah this is uh um yeah you're right uh the past year and a half I've had a huge campaign at our College to not send an internet link holding an email or a QR code because of the threat and um and and believe it or not or HR listen to me because they were sending out links like that for uh for pay Flex for training and things like that and so they met with me and they said well what do we do so the system we use is called my way so Tom you put it inside of my way in the email that goes out directs the user to go log into my way so they have to authenticate to a secondary system to get to the internet link so it it reduces that uh that footpic footprint quite a bit no that's great and then you don't have folks that uh you can make sure that they know full well that if it doesn't go through my way it's not a link to click right so no that's great that's a good way and I'm I'm glad to hear that your HR department has uh has implemented that well then two one of the things I use is uh for education training awareness I use the out of office assistant and uh Outlook so I put a security tip in there anybody who sends me an email they automatically get a tip whether they want it or not I'm gonna put a plug in here too um Zach you've been talking about like how we need to be aware of what's going on but you know teaching cyber security across the discipline is something that we're seeing more and more that is that involving part of all disciplines I mean it's not just one area that teaches cyber security anymore so I'm curious about if you're starting to integrate elements of cyber security into your teaching and you know our students becoming more aware of what the risks are and you know how you're upskilling them for that yeah so we've always included just a little bit about cyber security in there um I'd like to see something a little more formal and I do have plans to integrate that we just got done in AST in one of the ASTM committees uh creating a uas maintenance technician qualification standard and as a part of that the the knowledge required knowledge skills and abilities that we had identified uh one of them was at least the basic concepts of cyber security so I'm going to and that was that was just published here in January so the the update hasn't uh made it into the coursework yet as far as in a more formal way and so we do have a cyber security program here on campus at Northland and I do plan on going to talk to the uh to the instructor there and see what we can do about maybe at least putting a solid module together again to to formalize it a little bit about it I know our our students as maintenance technicians you know would not be the Cyber Security Experts however they do need to understand the basics of cyber security and make sure that they're not the person clicking that link or or plugging in a thumb drive that they just found on the streets you know that type of thing so I think Steven's gonna plug our cyad event yeah we have the cyan the cyber security across disciplines uh conference August the 1st and the second at Marine Valley Community College and I put a link in there if you're interested you can click on there and click the interested key and and you'll get some more information and be able to sign up we're actually taking uh uh I think they're they're going out for a call for presentations as well but what this what the sayad's going to provide is uh is a comprehensive uh review of cyber or other disciplines and then those other disciplines to talk about how those disciplines work and then what are they what needs are needed what we need as far as education and how to incorporate cyber security into those those different curriculum and then we can also uh incorporate in our curriculum for cyber uh good examples of Industry uh uh sector uh scenarios okay so check that out uh there we go and uh screenshot up there again thanks so Zach thank you for uh a great presentation I think it's a lot for us to think about and it's really uh cyber covers every crosses all types of disciplines so uh that's where we're our uh why we're focusing on on a cyad to help kind of promote that so thank you again and uh thanks everyone for attending Mike you have any closing uh I threw the link out there please fill out the survey your input is really important we try to bring topics that are really relevant to cyber security um and we put this together every year so your input is super important so please fill out the link it only takes a few minutes I appreciate that hope to see you at Moraine Valley yeah take care everybody have a great day weekend foreign

2023-05-01 05:29

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