Commercial aviation has always treated safety as non-negotiable, yet its digital attack surface keeps widening. Aerospace security specialists Lawrence Baker and Jeffrey Hall tell Mike Vizard that the industry now juggles classic ransomware on ticketing systems and loyalty apps while defending aircraft and ground equipment that were never designed for today’s threat landscape. Airlines are critical national infrastructure, Baker notes, so every new connectivity feature—live telemetry, passenger Wi-Fi, autonomous ground ops—forces a trade-off between data access and risk.

Regulation is accelerating, but it arrives on policy timelines, not flight schedules. Hall warns that each change of administration brings fresh rules, yet designing, certifying and flying a new jet still takes years. The smart move, Baker says, is to use those mandates to win budget, then automate the reporting burden so scarce funds stay focused on true defenses, not paperwork.

What keeps security leaders up at night? Anything that can halt take-off or compromise flight safety, plus fragile ground systems that could strand fleets for hours and bleed money with every delayed rotation. Meanwhile, talent is in short supply; few engineers understand both avionics and cybersecurity, so the sector is “growing” its own by up-skilling young hires and embedding cyber topics in engineering curricula.

AI offers help and headaches. Defenders already use machine-learning for log triage and anomaly detection, and Baker envisions AI-generated assurance cases for next-gen autonomous functions. Attackers will exploit the same tools, but Hall believes defenders still have the upper hand—for now.

Their bottom-line advice: focus on one protect surface at a time, break down silos between IT and aviation safety teams, and measure success by resilience, not box-counting. In a sector where a grounded jet costs tens of thousands per hour, cybersecurity isn’t just about avoiding catastrophe—it’s about keeping passengers and cargo moving when the next threat inevitably appears.