Application of capability-based cyber risk assessment methodology to a space system

Despite more than a decade of heightened focus on cybersecurity, cyber threats remain an ongoing and growing concern [1]-[3]. Stakeholders often perform cyber risk assessments in order to understand potential mission impacts due to cyber threats. One common approach to cyber risk assessment is event-based analysis which usually considers adverse events, effects, and paths through a system, then estimates the effort/likelihood and mission impact of such attacks. When conducted manually, this type of approach is labor-intensive, subjective, and does not scale well to complex systems. As an alternative, we present an automated capability-based risk assessment approach, compare it to manual event-based analysis approaches, describe its application to a notional space system ground segment, and discuss the results.