Integrated aviation security for defense-in-depth of next generation air transportation system

Abstract

To meet the significant increase in civil air traffic demand in the National Airspace System (NAS), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is cooperating with other departments to develop Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). NextGen will greatly increase the NAS capacity, efficiency, safety, flexibility, and environmental protection. Aviation Security is one of the core components in NextGen. Without security protection, all NextGen functions will be vulnerable to various attacks and cannot work robustly. In this paper, we propose an Integrated Aviation Security (IAS) framework for defense-in-depth of various aspects of NextGen security such as cyber security and aircraft anti-hijacking. IAS uses a multi-layered, cross-component, and multi-planed (data plane and control plane) structure. Multiple components in NextGen such as communication, navigation, surveillance, air traffic management, aircraft anti-hijacking, access control, biometrics, risk analysis and management, etc, are processed integratedly through information fusion to enhance the security performance of each module. We will present a detailed implementation approach of IAS including the AlertEnterprise based Integrated Risk Management (IRM) Model, defense-in-depth of communication, navigation, surveillance, and aircraft anti-hijacking. Compared with disparate systems, the proposed IAS has much higher security performance to be effective against both outsider and insider threats.