July 11, 2019
Cambridge Is Playing A Critical Role in NASA’s Return to The Moon 2024
NASA has launched accelerated plans to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024, and Cambridge is playing a critical role in enabling this mission. Members of Team Cambridge support the NASA Information Resources Directorate (IRD) at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas. IRD provides technology, business processes for information technology, and network security required for flight operations and mission success.
Cambridge personnel work on the BITSec program which plays a vital role in providing cybersecurity services for mission support systems at JSC. The scope of these services encompasses all the administrative, engineering, life sciences, telecommunications, and other systems at JSC that support the mission systems. The BITSec team’s responsibilities include:
- Assessing the security plans for all JSC systems to validate they are compliant with NIST and other IT security requirements.
- Monitoring JSC networks for Indicators of Compromise and working closely with the NASA agency Security Operations Center to investigate suspected incidents.
- Responding to confirmed IT security incidents at JSC and working with system administrators to remediate compromised systems and quickly return them to service.
- Providing Cyber Threat Intelligence services for JSC and, increasingly, for the entire NASA agency.
- Providing security engineering support at JSC for agency-level projects such as Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM), the new Agency Logging System, and the NASA Strategy to Improve Network Security.
“Cambridge is proud to support NASA at this exciting time, as flight operations resume, and America sets its sights on maintaining our leadership in space through continued exploration of both the Moon and Mars. We are dedicated to providing outstanding security services that will protect our cutting-edge technologies and enable mission success” said Cambridge BITSec Program Manager, Ramon Rodriguez.
Cambridge BITSec team members are playing a key role in planning for and implementing changes required for the center’s return to lunar flight operations. New mission support systems, vital to the exploration of the Moon and Mars, will have to be identified, security hardened, and monitored. As Flight Tempo increases, there may be a need for additional IT security services to support mission success. All these changes will affect the work that the BITSec team performs. Fortunately, Cambridge personnel have already begun working on the planning for these changes and participates in NASA’s preparation to go forward to the Moon by 2024.