A Review of Recent Advances and Security Challenges in Emerging E-Enabled Aircraft Systems

The continuing increase in air traffic, along with airline operators gradually adopting IP-based network technologies, has led to the transformational concept of e-Enabled or “connected” aircraft. This new framework envisions a single aeronautical communications architecture connecting across the entire spectrum of the aviation sector. However, due to the complex and multidimensional nature of aviation operations, no single technology can achieve the above goal. Instead, building an integrated system which uses multiple communication protocols and architectures, as well as cloud computing and big data analytics, is the most promising way forward. Hence this paper surveys the latest trends in emerging network communication systems for commercial aviation. A range of cyber-threats is then identified for the e-Enabled aircraft paradigm, followed by discussions on related solution methodologies. Note that the topics related to military aviation security are not considered here.