Sink or SWIM: Information Security Requirements in the Sky

Despite the inherently cooperative nature of air traffic control, the ICT infrastructure supporting it has, metaphorically speaking, largely remained isolated islands of technology. To this day, most of the interaction between ATM centers is based on voice and point-to-point data communication. Speed and accuracy of coordination is thus frequently limited by human capacities. This also imposes severe restrictions on the scale of coordination efforts among ATM centers. There are, however, changes underway. The main ambition of the System-Wide Information Management (SWIM) concept is to realize a European-wide network of interconnected ATM systems that promises, among other things, to bring substantial gains in efficiency of coordination and improved utilization of valuable airspace. This paper presents challenges, approaches and experiences from ongoing work on security requirements within SWIM.