Off-air testing wards off the cyber threat

According to the OTA, 93% of all breaches could have been prevented if companies set up a response plan and implemented strong data stewardship, including risk reduction measures. According to Danish satcom-company, GateHouse Telecom, testing of new applications are a serious blind spot in terms of cyber security.

“You can significantly lower the risk of cyber-attacks if you use off-air testing when assessing new applications. Some already use off-air testing to assess satellite terminals whenever they want, in a closed and secure environment before deployment in the field. In particular, developers handling sensitive information such as payment or military applications are experiencing the necessity of a safe and unrestricted testing environment,” Thomas S. Jensen, director of GateHouse Telecom, said.

In the US, cyber-crime is the fastest growing crime and is set to cost the global economy $6tn annually by 2021 in damages, according to a report by the Herjavec Group. Europe is also heavily affected and a third of European businesses have experienced data theft, figures from EfficientIP show.

“The increase in cyber-crimes calls for resilient technologies that reduce risks and prevent cyber-attacks on solutions and new applications. Here, off-air testing is a preventive measure that cuts short hackers and helps secure new applications,” Thomas S. Jensen said.

Many companies use encryption to secure confidentiality of the transferred data. Encryption can be done in many ways, and applies to the data transferred as well as meta data, such as the time and place of the data transfer. But encryption can affect solution performance and needs to be tested using either on-air testing or off-air testing.

“To find out how much encryption affects performance, you need to test the application under all kinds of conditions that you cannot control when using on-air testing. With off-air solution testing, you can emulate all the conditions that your application might be exposed to - for instance the impact weatherfade has on an encrypted data transfer,” Thomas S. Jensen explained.

Take Back Control with Off-Air SatCom Testing
GateHouse Telecom’s off-air test tools all emulate a real satellite connection and can be used at any time in a lab for application development and test.

Emulation of the satellite link gives you full control of test conditions and allows developers to expose the application to circumstances set up prior to the test. In that way, retailers can also demonstrate solutions’ performance at trade shows and other indoor sales situations.

“With off-air testing you can take back control of conditions and imitate any given circumstance for instance poor network conditions such as weather fades and congestion. And you can do it in a safe environment with no risk of external exposure or attacks,” Thomas S. Jensen said.

The GateHouse Telecom test suite currently spans tools developed for precise emulation of the Inmarsat BGAN and Global Xpress networks.