Cybercrime in space is a very real problem, and the state of California is in the hot seat to provide a cyber-aware workforce to patrol the stars.

Alongside the headliner catastrophes of recent months, “we cannot forget that we continue to be faced with other less visible but still very serious challenges,” said Eleni Kounalakis (pictured, left), lieutenant governor of California. “Cybersecurity threats are one of these. We have seen cities, companies and individuals paralyzed by attacks costing time and money and creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and insecurity.”

Kounalakis and William J. Britton (right), vice president of information technology and chief information officer of Cal Poly Information Technology Services at California Polytechnic State University and visiting director of Cal Poly’s Cybersecurity Center (Lt. Col. Ret. U.S. Air Force), spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the Space & Cybersecurity Symposium. They discussed California’s role in supporting the future of space and cybersecurity.

California leads in education and aerospace

“California has been at the forefront of the aerospace industry for more than a century; through all the major innovations in aerospace from wooden aircraft to World War II bombers to rockets and Mars rovers,” Kounalakis said.

This is not chance; the state had the educational infrastructure to supply the highly skilled workers these specialized industries needed thanks to its master plan for higher education.

“California has always had strong innovation ecosystem and robust infrastructure,” Kounalakis said. “A big part of that infrastructure is a skilled workforce. And at the foundation of a skilled workforce is education.”

The state’s public education system boasts 10 University of California campuses, 23 California State university campuses and 116 California Community colleges, according to Kounalakis. California is also home to world-renowned private educational institutes, such as the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University, four national laboratories, and three NASA facilities. Adding to its attraction for business, the state also has a high number of immigrants, creating a rich and varied cultural diversity that “is our strength and helps drive our economy,” Kounalakis said.

A new master plan is necessary as space and cybersecurity intersect

But despite these statistics, the master plan is failing. The state currently has 37,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs, indicating a huge skills gap. And the need for cyber-cognizant workers is expected to grow as commerce moves into space and securing satellites and space installations becomes an international concern.

The state is taking a two-pronged approach, not only creating an educational curriculum that supports STEM skills from kindergarten on, but inviting industry to join the push to cyber-skill the population. Leading the initiative is Cal Poly’s California Cybersecurity Institute, which “does incredible work bringing together academia, industry and government, training the next generation of cyber experts and researching emerging cybersecurity issues,” Kounalakis said.

Cal Poly’s California Cyber Innovation Challenge has become a popular way to introduce students to cybersecurity. In the challenge, teams of students compete to solve a cyber challenge and present their results to a panel of judges. This year’s scenario was a hacked commercial spacecraft that had crashed.

“The students had to do the forensics on the payload. Then they had to do downstream network analysis, using things like [network protocol analyzer] Wireshark and [digital forensics platform] Autopsy,” Britton said. The winner of the ultimate league was North Hollywood High School, which has taken the trophy for the past five years.

“It’s amazing,” said Britton, who attended the virtual competition. “They are so more advanced and ready to understand space problems and virtual problems than we are.”

But North Hollywood may have trouble dominating the field next year, as the 2021 challenge is going to be opened to global participation. “So if North Hollywood pulls it off again next year, it’s going to be because they’ve met the best in the world,” Britton said.

Get ready for the cyberspace rodeo

With the space industry shaping up to be a $3 trillion industry, California plans to remain a global leader and innovator. The state, Cal Poly and the U.S. Space Force have recently combined forces to create another master plan: to develop a commercial space port at Vanderbilt Air Force base and increase the presence of space industry in the region.

“New companies are going to emerge doing things we never could have dreamed of today,” Kounalakis said as she quoted Lieutenant General John Thompson’s words from the first session of the Symposium. “The next few years of space and cyber innovation are not going to be a pony ride at the state fair, they’re going to be a rodeo. We should all saddle up.”

For the complete four-day Space & Cybersecurity Symposium event lineup, click here. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Space & Cybersecurity Symposium. California Polytechnic State University, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, has no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE