Hundreds of people are expected to benefit from CyberOps’ planned testing and training facility that will teach defence industry pros about space cyber, and space cyber experts about defence.

Speaking to InDaily, director Daniel Floreani explains that space cyber is essentially cybersecurity for objects in space like satellites and rockets, and for the infrastructure on the ground that facilitates launches and monitoring.

He highlighted that space cyber literacy among defence professionals would rise as a result of his company’s upcoming program which aims to enhance Australia’s sovereign capability in turn.

It is also of critical importance in our increasingly space-reliant economy and defence sector according to Floreani, who pointed to the ongoing Ukraine war as real world example of space cyber warfare.

“If you’re a cyber guy and you’re working with a satellite and you don’t understand orbits or the sensors on board, then you don’t understand how these things work and the implications of it going on the dark side,” he said.

“The other type is the space people who are designing and building their systems – they need to build them securely. We need cyber people in the design teams and the software teams to ensure they’re built securely by design.

“Then there’s the people who operate the missions – how do they know if a satellite is being attacked by chemical sprays or by cyber or if it’s just broken? They need operators to understand the vectors out there.”

For Floreani – who founded CyberOps in 2016 – securing the contract with the Department of Defence is the culmination of work done to date with his Lot Fourteen-based business.

The company already provides consulting services to a range of small to medium enterprises, larger listed companies and state and federal government departments, but he hopes the facility will play a major part in increasing Australia’s space cyber capability.

By educating the next generation of space, cyber and defence personnel he hopes to have more of an impact than he would by just building “a box and putting it on a satellite”.

“Cyber is pervasive, it’s everywhere and not just in a satellite. It’s in the ground station, it’s in a rocket, it’s in the launch facility and user terminals,” he said.

“So we’ve taken this approach to go across the whole ecosystem and not just look at building a widget for a satellite.

“What we’re doing is we’re building a testing environment…a simulation environment.”

Floreani hopes to demonstrate the facility at the upcoming Australian Space Cyber Forum in October, co-hosted by CyberOps. It will be situated in the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre at Lot Fourteen once complete.