Viasat: “Industry must expect more cyber attacks”
March 24, 2022
By Chris Forrester
California-based Viasat’s chairman Mark Dankberg, speaking at the Washington Satellite 2022, told delegates that the satellite industry should expect more attempts to compromise networks.
Viasat’s European KA-SAT was hit by a deliberate cyber-attack on February 24th.
“There will be worse cyber attacks than that if we’re not really vigilant,” Dankberg warned. He said that Viasat now has a complete understanding of the problem but admitted that some customers are still offline. One of the problems, he said, was that because Viasat was in the middle of the purchase of KA-SAT, consequently the handling of the satellite base’s operation was in the hands of a third party “as part of the transition agreement”.
Dankberg confirmed that many of the client modems suffered permanent damage and are being refurbished or replaced.
Viasat was working through the affected sites and as fast as it could to bring clients back online.