Workshop on Cybersecurity in Aviation Begins March 20

Aviation personnel from 14 countries across the Caribbean and Latin American region will take part in a Cybersecurity in Aviation Workshop from March 20 to 23 at the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, St. James.

The workshop is being hosted by the Jamaica Civil Aviation Authority (JCAA) in association with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the Organization of American States Inter-American Committee against Terrorism (OAS CICTE), and MBJ Airports Ltd.

In an interview with JIS News, Manager for Aviation Security and Facilitation at the JCAA, Captain (Ret’d) Althea Bartley, said that the workshop was developed out of a need to increase awareness of cybersecurity threats within the aviation industry. This, she said, was based on numerous incidents that have occurred over the last couple of years.

She noted that aviation is a “critical infrastructure for any government or country, and, as such, we (in Jamaica) realised the need to bring to the fore some guidance material for states and stakeholders as to how does one help to mitigate against these new and emerging cybersecurity threats”.

According to Captain Bartley, cybersecurity crosses all areas in aviation, including airports, airlines, civil aviation authorities and air navigation, “so it is very broad, and the aim is to develop a workshop that pulls everybody together in order to apply measures to mitigate this particular risk”.

She said that the staging of the four-day workshop will assist participating states to meet some of the recommendations that have been identified by ICAO.

She informed that the participants are largely regulatory personnel from civil aviation authorities within their jurisdiction, military aviation and airport personnel. The OAS has provided 15 scholarships for persons from member states to participate.