Page 48 - Australian Defence Magazine November 2019

COMMS AND C4I
SATCOMS
“It is heartening to see what happens when a program office engages early, admits that they don’t have all the answers and engages accordingly.”
security expertise enables us to provide a much faster learning trajectory than, we believe, anyone else in the industry. Our CSOC is comprised of five military sup- ported capabilities. One is cyber security an- alytics who will develop threat intelligence, modelling, machine learning, that underpin the CSOC’s efforts. We have the CSOC development team that builds automated tools, that monitor networks to detect cy- ber threats. We have a cyber infrastructure engineering team that handles the security architecture and then a cyber threat intel- ligence group that identifies, contextualises and tracks threats in a coordinated way.
“All of that feeds our cyber detection response group and we believe that that is re- ally a market leading technology capability and skillset globally.
“And then, because we’re both a network architect and network provider providing the
entirety of a satcom ecosystem, as well as a cyber security expert, we’re able to holisti- cally design our networks as the cyber secu- rity is designed right into our networks from the very start. And then we use real time data analytics to continually optimise and improve our network but also our cyber se- curity capability and trajectory over time. So it’s constantly getting better and stronger.”
Cooper confirmed that the company in Australia would establish their own sover- eign CSOC while working with local com- panies wherever possible should they be suc- cessful on the program.
“We’re also looking at teaming with local
companies to build on the work that we’ve done under JP2008 project phases,” Cooper said to ADM. “So for our UHF mil satcom support we team with an SME called Black- tree Technology based in Belmont in West- ern Australia. In addition to the partnership on the 5A support project, we have a strate- gic alliance with Blacktree Technology , not only supporting the 5A support but leverag- ing them into our international UHF mil satcom businesses going forward.”
Conclusion and comment
It is heartening to see what happens when a program office engages early, admits that they don’t have all the answers and engages accord- ingly. ADM understands that the program has been accelerated from the original sched- ule as the program office has the support of the Investment Committee (and soon gov- ernment) to proceed based on their approach within the increased budget and scope.
Given the mounting importance and reli- ance on space-based systems, the next gen- eration of technology on the ground and in space can’t come fast enough.
48 | November 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au
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