Known as the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), these satellites’ signals form the backbone of mobile networks, energy grids, the internet, and GPS.

Despite their unparalleled contribution to the operation of the 21st-century global economy, their dependability is increasingly under threat. A blackout could cause chaos almost immediately. GPS signals can be jammed, meaning they are deliberately drowned out with other powerful radio signals, and spoofed, where erroneous signals are broadcast to deceive positioning systems.

GPS interference has been documented in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the South China Sea. For example, in battle-ravaged Ukraine, Russians were reportedly jamming GPS and other satellite-based navigation systems around the Baltic Sea in 2024.

The scale of the disruptions was so great that it forced a temporary halt to commercial air traffic at a major airport after flights had to be diverted mid-route.

In Estonia, commercial flight operations at Tartu Airport had to be suspended. According to publicly reported data from commercial aircraft, the jamming also affected parts of neighbouring Latvia and Lithuania, sites in Finland and Sweden across the Baltic Sea, and as far afield as Poland and Germany.

The Russians used a straightforward method, which involved broadcasting a more powerful signal on the same frequency as GPS. Since the real GPS signals come from satellites 12,500 miles above the Earth’s surface, they can easily be drowned out by much closer terrestrial broadcasts. Experts identified three ground-based locations in Russian territory, including the port enclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched on the Baltic coast between Latvia and Poland, as the sources of the technical interference.

GPS spoofing: A new conflict playbook?

In the Middle East, researchers from the University of Texas in 2024 identified an Israeli air base as a major source of widespread GPS disruptions affecting civilian airline navigation in the region.

These spoofing disruptions involved the transmission of manipulated GPS signals, which can cause aeroplane instruments to misread their location.

Lead researchers Todd Humphreys and Zach Clements stated that they are “highly confident” that Ein Shemer Airfield in northern Israel is the source of these attacks.

The research team utilised data emitted by the spoofer and picked up by satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) to pinpoint its location. They then confirmed their calculations using ground data collected in Israel.

Spoofing, along with GPS jamming, has significantly increased in the past three years, especially near war zones like Ukraine and Gaza, where militaries interfere with navigation signals to redirect aerial attacks.

The Middle East has emerged as a hotspot for GPS spoofing. The New York Times reported that a separate analysis estimated that over 50,000 flights were affected in the region in 2024 alone.

Researchers from SkAI Data Services and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, analysing data from the OpenSky Network, found that these attacks led pilots to mistakenly believe they were over airports in Beirut or Cairo.

Swiss International Air Lines told The New York Times that their flights were spoofed “almost every day over the Middle East.” While these attacks have not led to significant safety risks, as pilots can use alternative navigation methods, they do raise concerns.

Jeremy Bennington, vice president of Spirent Communications, said, “Losing GPS is not going to cause aeroplanes to fall out of the sky. But I also don’t want to deny the fact that we are removing layers of safety.”

Spoofing attacks can trigger false alerts about planes being too close to the ground, leading to navigation confusion and possibly compromising flight safety.

Dana Goward, the founder of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, said, “You would see traffic jams, a lot more traffic accidents, because transportation will experience the first and most immediate impact.”

“An uncertainty wave would affect thousands of aircraft in the air, which rely on GPS and other systems for navigation and precise landing. The precision positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) offered by the US-owned constellation of 31 GPS satellites may then begin to falter in other vital areas of society, such as energy production systems and financial transactions. There would be global repercussions,” says Matt Burgess, a senior journalist who focuses on information security, privacy, and data regulation in Europe.

Fullproof yet vulnerable?

According to Erik Daehler, vice president of defence, satellites, and spacecraft systems at Sierra Space, if a catastrophic event were to occur that results in the complete loss of GPS, every moving object, piece of data, and person would be tracked on a global scale.

He states that if GPS doesn’t work seamlessly or even shuts down in the worst-case scenario, our society and economy will grind to a disastrous halt. The loss of GPS timing signals would be one of the most significant. Cell phone service would likely stop working, and the disruption would swiftly wipe out billions from stock markets.

The United States, which heavily depends on its sovereign space system, has lagged in developing backups that offer the necessary resilience to keep the nation running. This could leave it especially vulnerable to a GPS outage.

In 2024, the National Space-Based PNT Advisory Board issued a warning that Washington had fallen behind. In contrast, China has strengthened its own advanced satellite navigation system, BeiDou, using a vast network of terrestrial radio signals and fibre-optic cables.

Over the course of its 40-year existence, the GPS constellation, which consists of 31 satellites, has undergone multiple hardware upgrades, achieving 100% broadcasting availability and the ability to provide precise location information within seven metres. The four other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) currently in use are Europe’s Galileo constellation, Russia’s GLONASS, and China’s BeiDou.

However, over the last five years, GNSS signals have been targeted more frequently as the technology to interfere with them has become more affordable. The South China Sea, parts of the Middle East, Russia, Israel, Myanmar, and the European Baltic nations have become the most frequently disrupted regions.

“I’m most concerned about aviation. At least one fatal aviation accident in Europe can be traced to GNSS interference as a primary cause. A deliberate attack against US aviation, as opposed to the collateral attacks in Europe, would cause astounding economic harm,” said Todd Humphreys, the director of the University of Texas at Austin’s radio navigation laboratory.

According to aviation officials, the number of spoofing incidents in 2024 was 500% higher than in 2023.

Catching up

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency notes that PNT data is essential to practically all critical infrastructure in the United States, ranging from food production and wastewater management to communications and health care monitoring systems.

However, GPS is frequently the “sole” source of this data, which increases the vulnerability of these systems. In comparison to commercial applications, the military employs a more reliable GPS setup.

Experts suggest that developing a “layered” strategy could help reduce GPS’s susceptibility to attacks. China’s BeiDou and Europe’s Galileo are both newer and, in some ways, more robust than GPS. The National Space-Based PNT Advisory Board highlighted a wider range of backups to BeiDou’s system in a 2024 comparison of BeiDou and GPS.

BeiDou has satellites in multiple orbits and is further along in deploying them into low Earth orbit, while GPS satellites are only found in medium Earth orbit. To broadcast alternatives, China has also installed 20,000 kilometres of fibre-optic cables connecting to 295 timing centres and a terrestrial radio broadcast network known as eLoran.

“In the case of BeiDou, the system’s enhanced resiliency and capability should be considered an element of ‘soft power’ and a tool for great power competition,” the advisory board wrote last year.

Under the direction of former US Coast Guard chief Admiral Thad Allen, the board demanded that GPS be explicitly classified as “critical infrastructure” and that PNT be managed more cooperatively throughout the US government.

There are several ongoing initiatives to improve the GPS setup, as well as different levels of backup systems that have been introduced intermittently across the nation. To ensure they have backups for the timing element supplied by GPS, and that telecom networks maintain some capacity, financial institutions, for example, have been implementing atomic clocks.

According to Jeremy Bennington, vice president of PNT Assurance at Spirent Communications, “That’s not to say that the US doesn’t have a robust timing infrastructure; actually, it’s quite robust.”

He also notes that a large portion of it is dispersed across commercial entities—a significant contrast to China’s national approach.

In 2020, Donald Trump issued an executive order to strengthen PNT systems. In 2025, the Federal Communications Commission launched an investigation to find backup GPS options.

The FCC said, “America is exposed to a single point of failure, and our PNT system is open to disruption or manipulation by adversaries when GPS is used as the primary source of PNT data.”

The current GPS can be upgraded in several ways to increase resilience. For a long time, the military has been developing improvements for use in defensive scenarios.

According to Bennington, GPS satellites may be placed in additional orbits, and more powerful signals could be released in the future. Daehler and his team at Sierra Space are developing strategies to mitigate the effects of spoofing and jamming.

In addition, there are hardware updates, some of which have been slow and ongoing for years. Several businesses have recently received funding from the US Space Force to create GPS constellations for low-Earth orbit satellites and system launchers.

Other applications of quantum technologies include the development of new navigational systems. Google’s subsidiary SandboxAQ is developing magnetic navigation. Bennington notes that in addition to improved government oversight of GPS, businesses must invest in modernising their systems and safeguards. It entails spending cash.

“The cost of the airlines’ cancellations and delays, just for a few hours, would be greater than the cost of upgrading their fleets if GPS jamming or spoofing were to occur at any major airport, whether it’s Heathrow, Frankfurt, Munich, or New York,” he added.

While GPS satellites are critical to modern infrastructure, their vulnerability to jamming and spoofing poses significant risks. As global reliance on precise positioning grows, the need for resilient backup systems and improved safeguards has become increasingly urgent.

The post GPS jamming: A growing threat to aviation safety appeared first on International Finance.

It enables achieving more profitability and outperforming the typical returns of on-premise systems. All business operations, including sales and marketing, finance, legal, and more, benefit from SaaS support’s introduction of efficiency and cost reductions.

Frictionless, Integrated Travel
The rise of mobility-as-a-service is the primary indicator of the need to make travel more convenient and hassle-free (MaaS). But this one significant drift toward integrated travel and transportation is the outcome of several essential transportation trends in the sector coming together and aiming for few stoppages or checks.

The smaller trends include infrastructure optimization, constructing platforms for ticketless travel, creating mobility hubs for multimodal transportation, and introducing innovations in last-mile connectivity and micro-mobility.

Visibility & GPS Anti-Theft
The adoption of tracking technologies and their adaptation for improved traceability are among the primary driving trends in the transportation industry this year as E-Commerce, retail, and logistic organizations increasingly focus on increased visibility. For example, Anti-Theft GPS is a way to get the positions of entire fleets and individual goods while in motion. Additional security measures will also assist in preventing general losses.

Autonomous Trucks
Self-driving truck technology is still being developed. It must overcome several challenges, such as enhancing driverless software to enable it to operate well on urban roads with heavy traffic. But it’s one of the upcoming trends in transportation. Long-term, transportation companies should start outfitting their trucks with self-navigating management systems that can “learn” from actual drivers to be ready for impending technological advances in transportation.

An artificial intelligence-enabled vehicle can accurately assess road conditions and learn from how truck drivers behave under “unusual” situations on the road thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and several sensors. Trucks can exchange newly acquired knowledge with other vehicles via vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication, making other cars more intelligent. Additionally, the deployment of self-driving fleets will be accelerated by the proliferation of 5G technology. These machines may eventually outperform human drivers in terms of driving skills.

This future is far nearer than it may seem. The autopilot functions on Tesla’s electric semi-truck can make driving much more accessible. As a result, Walmart and numerous other businesses, including Pepsi, Asko, and Loblaw, announced that they had ordered Tesla Semi vehicles for their business requirements.

Compliance With Regulations
Instead of calling it one of the newest transportation trends, it would be more accurate to argue that regulatory compliance is a need. Commercial and public transportation companies must be informed of recent laws and regulations introduced, modified, or eliminated by local, state, or federal governments. Requirements about electronic logbooks, overtime, or safety procedures are all common examples of timely monitoring regulations.

The post Transportation sector 2023: Five trends to look out for appeared first on International Finance.

During his stint in Visa, he was responsible for forging regional and global partnerships with third-party processors and BIN sponsors.  Prior to that, Gough was head of prepaid products, Asia Pacific, and head of issuer processing services, Australia and New Zealand, at Visa. 

Joanne Dewar, Chief Executive Officer of GPS, told the media, “We are thrilled to welcome Damien to the GPS team. His in-depth experience with supporting the launch and growth of many of the largest fintech issuance programmes in Asia Pacific, both prepaid and debit, will be immensely beneficial to the growth of GPS in the region. 

Damien has an good track record of effectively engaging ecosystem partners across Asia Pacific, including sponsor banks, eKYC vendors, fintech investors and various processors which will be pivotal to the strength of our partnerships in the fastest-growing fintech market in the world.”

With the support of the UK Department for International Trade’s Fintech Bridges and the Singaporean Economic Development Board, GPS expanded into the APac region in November 2019. The expertise, experience, breadth of APIs and local support provided by GPS to fintechs and digital banks, are helping to streamline what was once a complex process simple.

The post GPS appoints former Visa head Damien Gough for APac operations appeared first on International Finance.

The new hires will strengthen the executive leadership team of GPS, the payments processing partner for some of the globally recognised and successful fintechs on the market. This even includes Revolut, Starling Bank and Curve, as the business drives its global expansion plans beyond Europe and APAC.

Richard Hodgson is responsible for scaling the GPS Finance function as it expands geographically, bringing more customers onto the GPS platform. As a qualified accountant, he  brings with him over 25 years of experience in financial services, pharmaceuticals, and FMCG. 

That said, Shaun Puckrin is responsible for setting the product strategy and roadmap at GPS in his role as chief product officer, ensuring that these align with the company’s overall commercial strategy. With more than 20 years of  experience in payments, mobile and fintech, Shaun has a track record of developing award-winning B2B and B2C products. 

In his capacity as chief technology officer, Jerome Gudgeon spearheads the technology strategy and delivery for the business, which includes overall responsibility for the development and day-to-day technology operations of the GPS Apex platform. Having held senior technology and leadership positions at American Express, TD Bank, Fidelity and a Swiss Private Bank, Jerome brings more than 25 years’ experience in payments, investments and banking technology. Alongside this, he also founded two fintech start-ups in payments and investments.

The post GPS appoints C-level executives to strengthen the leadership team appeared first on International Finance.

Why did you decide to overhaul your system?

CHCP covers a wide geographic area employing just over 2,000 members of staff. With teams regularly travelling to homes, health centres and clinics, it is important that we carry out administrative tasks, such as logging mileage and expenses claims, efficiently and accurately.

We recognised that paper-based processes weren’t an efficient way to manage expense claims going forward. Not only did it present many challenges for employees and managers but with digitisation sweeping the healthcare sector, replacing manual practises also provided the opportunity to enhance reporting and drive efficiencies through data collection.

How have you been able to reduce the administrative burden?

In order to better understand cost drivers and streamline the expenses process, we selected a digital expenses solution from Selenity. The system was customised to reflect our expense policy and also integrated with our existing Electronic Staff Record (ESR). Only having one system to update was of huge benefit to our administrative staff, as it afforded them with greater efficiencies and time savings.

With data being exchanged between ESR and Selenity Expenses, the team has piece of mind that any updates to employee information, such as change of address are replicated across the board and information is always up-to-date. The implementation also coincided with a number of other digital transformation initiatives being introduced throughout the organisation. Mobile working is a key part of CHCP’s vision and the availability of Selenity’s Expenses Mobile app supports the new flexible approach to working.

What are the key factors to success?

Undoubtedly training. With much organisational-wide change taking place, we understood that training would be an important component when introducing and rolling out the new system to the wider service teams.

For a successful and smooth transition to the new system, we knew that we’d have to manage staff expectations from the beginning to the end of the change process. Ensuring that users were fully informed, comfortable in what they were doing and understood how to claim for the right items and amounts. We developed an electronic training package, in addition to delivering face-to-face training with a handful of the clinical service teams. We recognised that the expenses system is intuitive to use in itself but claimants would also need guidance and a little bit of support to start with.

Developing an electronic training package that linked into the ESR meant that staff members could easily login to the learning portal and access training. The interactive nature of the materials engaged new users and reinforced CHCP’s expenses policy—it transpired that claimants weren’t always reading the static training documents that were being sent out. By championing the solution and marketing training packages to the service teams and other colleagues, CHCP found that the use of the Expenses Mobile app increased and more employees engaged and used the solution.

How has accuracy increased?

By digitising the expenses process, we have seen a reduction in our average mileage costs. The implementation of the system has highlighted that our expenses policy had been open to interpretation by employees, largely when claiming for business mileage.

Having a system tailored to our needs has certainly raised the transparency of our procedures and reinforced the organisations expenses policy. Not only has it increased the accuracy of claims but also introduced an element of consistency. After the system went live we learnt that there had previously been variation in the methods used by employees to record journeys—with some using odometer readings and others calculating distance with online route planners.

Policy reminders and mileage verification in the form of GPS capture and postcode to postcode look ups, have helped to increase the consistency of mileage claims submitted by employees. For administrators these measures have meant claims are easier to review and approve and there is much less checking and chasing for additional information. The process has been greatly improved and ultimately, the new system has given us the ability to look at how we deliver services and if there’s a way to improve them and make them more efficient.

How has the new system helped with reporting?

Having a digital system provides us with a level of transparency that we just didn’t have before. As a team we can now carry out a large amount of reporting, the detailed information generated by the software gives us the ability to take that data and use it in a meaningful way. By capturing information in a central point, we’re able to continually use real-time information as a tool to help transform our organisation. Not does it help to drive decision making but also allows us to challenge some of the behaviours we’ve picked up on—you just wouldn’t get that from a paper form.

By working closely with other departments and understanding the changing technological landscape, the IT projects team were able to implement a solution which matched the organisations current and future needs. Not only did Selenity Expenses support our immediate plans to mobilise employees and introduce flexible working practices, it also allowed us to harness data in order to drive transformation and decision making.

For instance, we could identify patterns in the data and pass those insights onto operational managers. The transparency of the system has also helped us to field inquiries and compare statistics, such as looking at how the average mileage claims compare from one service to another. Harnessing data in this way has enabled us to provide effective value for money services, ensuring that the right people, are in the right places, doing the right things at the right time.

The post City Health Care Partnership drives digital transformation appeared first on International Finance.

“Many limited partners understand how lines of credit can be beneficial to the cash flows of GPs and LPs alike, but over the last several years the practice has expanded significantly in size and scope,” said Jennifer Choi, Managing Director of Industry Affairs, ILPA.  “ILPA wants to ensure that LPs have access to the necessary information regarding GPs’ use of these facilities, and how they impact the alignment of interest between the two parties. Therefore, our recommendations are centered on a fundamental commitment to transparency and disclosure.”

The ILPA guidance, which was developed in concert with LPs, GPs, and industry advisers, includes the following recommendations:

• LPs should require their managers to disclose quarterly information on the size of the lines, number of days outstanding, specific uses of the capital, and impact of credit line facilities on reported IRRs.  During due diligence, LPs should request that prospective mangers provide the impact of subscription facilities on past reported performance.
• Within partnership agreements, waterfall provisions should specify that the date used to calculate the GPs’ preferred return hurdle aligns to when the credit facility is drawn, rather than when capital is ultimately called from the LPs.
• Partnership agreement provisions addressing use of subscription facilities should establish reasonable thresholds for their use, such as a maximum of 15-25% of all uncalled capital and no more than 180 days outstanding.  Such provisions should also make clear the burdens placed on the LPs whose commitments are used to secure the line.

The ILPA intends to continuously reflect member feedback and new market conditions into this document and will publish, as needed, updates to this guidance on the ILPA website.

The post ILPA issues guidance for limited partners on subscription lines of credit used by private equity funds appeared first on International Finance.

Nigel Davies

October 17, 2016: Over the past decade, the nature of the threats to society has evolved beyond the physical world in which they traditionally operated. State-sponsored cybercrime and organised criminal hacking has become a threat to almost every sector that relies on an internet connection. Unsurprisingly, the financial trading sector is at increasing risk from such activity.

Many countries are now waking up to the fact that protecting national security in an increasingly volatile geopolitical landscape requires more than the traditional military and law enforcement efforts of previous decades. Just two examples of recent national security breaches include an attack on the Ukrainian national power grid and an attempted $951 million heist on Bangladesh’s central bank (the thieves successfully stole $81 million).

Cybersecurity firm Symantec has since found evidence linking the theft to the North Korean government, along with a string of other state-sponsored attacks against banks in South East Asia. The attacks against Ukraine and Bangladesh boiled down to one fact: malicious actors were able to exploit vulnerabilities in the critical national infrastructure (CNI) of entire states, resulting in severe consequences for both targets; an attractive end goal for any attacker.

Nigel Davies is Head of Secured Navigation, QinetiQ

Defence review covers private sector

This new kind of attack is reflected in the UK’s latest Strategic Defence and Security review. Evolving from its 2010 predecessor, the security of the private sector and civil society are now as much a part of the review as the military. From the ‘bombs and bullets’ approach of previous strategic policies, it is now concerned with defence against state-sponsored attacks, organised crime and protecting CNI.

The government’s intent “is for the UK to remain the top choice for European and global bank headquarters”, intending also to “build resilience to financial crisis”. Most importantly, it “will seek to develop long-term partnerships with industry, built on trust and collaboration, through better sharing of information and expertise¹.” It’s clear that, given its importance to the UK’s economy, protecting the financial trading sector plays a big part in securing the UK’s CNI.

At the moment, precise timing and synchronisation of financial transactions is critical to markets worldwide, is mandated by regulation in the European Union and is increasingly required in the United States. These high frequency transactions (HFT) involve moving millions of dollars in the space of seconds, with monetary values adjusting and reacting to real-time updates. To put it in perspective, the New York Stock Exchange handles nearly $2 billion in trades in the first two minutes of opening.

In order to allow HFT, the financial trading industry relies on timing sources and systems generally reliant on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as GPS, to remain in sync with incredibly accurate timestamps.

The MiFID II legislation, announced last year and coming into effect across the EU in 2018, dictates that trades have to be traceable up to 100 microseconds. The reliance on such miniscule accuracies and coordination makes the system and the source of time and synchronisation information an obvious target for attack.

The vulnerabilities

While GNSS has become a phenomenally successful, ubiquitous and reliable source of accurate time, it suffers from two fundamental vulnerabilities. The first is in the strength of the GNSS signals, which are used by receivers to calculate time and position. The satellites which transmit those signals orbit the Earth at an altitude of over 20,000 km, which means that the signals are very weak and vulnerable to interference by the time they reach Earth. In fact they are so weak as to be imperceptible from the background noise of other transmissions, requiring complex algorithms to identify and track them. An attacker who is able to transmit additional ‘noise’ over the top of GNSS signals can stop a receiver from working properly, or at all.

The most basic of jamming devices work by broadcasting excessive noise over the GNSS signal, resulting in the receiver’s inability to lock onto the signals broadcast by the GNSS satellites.

The SENTINEL Project – a nationwide, UK government-backed investigation into GNSS jamming – tracked the proliferation of jammers, finding in one location more than 60 GPS interference incidents in six months.

While most interference incidents are minor and go unnoticed, in some situations, the impact can be substantial, leading to lost revenue. An example of this in action took place in 2009. Engineer Gary Bojczak was fined $32,000 for transmitting radio interference which disrupted the operation of Newark Liberty International Airport’s new air traffic control system.

Bojczak worked for an engineering firm that tracked its vehicles using GPS. However, Bojczak installed a jamming device in his assigned vehicle to stop his employer tracking his movements. His daily work route would take him past the airport, subsequently interfering with GPS signals used by the aircraft landing aids on approach to the airport.

The other vulnerability is the ease with which a false signal can be transmitted by an attacker to ‘trick’ a receiver into generating a false position or time. This is known as a ‘spoofing’ attack. The open access GNSS signals, which are widely used today by non-military users, are defined by open standards published on the internet. While this has led to a vibrant market in GNSS devices, it also means that the signals can be copied by an attacker.

These two factors combine to make the civilian satellite systems used by the financial trading sector highly vulnerable to tampering, blocking and disruption. Currently, devices which can create interference and disrupt the use of GNSS can be bought for as little as $40 online and are often no bigger than the size of a cigarette lighter.

Spoofing attacks are more complex and, until recently, were considered to be only within the grasp of Nation States and militaries. However, a 2015 paper published by the Chinese Qihoo 360 security research firm demonstrated GPS spoofing using low-cost hardware and open source software.

While there is  only rare and anecdotal evidence of civilian spoofing attacks to date (for instance, reports that drug cartels are spoofing drones operated by the US Customs and Border Protection agency), most experts believe it is only a matter of time before attacks become more common.

Mitigating threats

The sheer volume and value of data in the financial industry that needs to be time-stamped by GNSS data leaves it at risk from interference. Interfering with a GNSS signal could have consequences for trading bodies calculating the correct time of trades and keeping up with real-time trade requests. Even an event that lasted only a couple of seconds may impact system performance or even cause a crash as timings between networks fail to match. In the era of HFT, this could be costly.

Audit trails would also become confused, with one party buying and receiving the share before the other has ‘officially’ sold it. This is crucial when regulators have started to clamp down on HFT fraud; an inability to unravel HFT trails could leave the industry open to market rigging.

Such interference events are experienced by financial organisations. It is claimed that for roughly 10 minutes every day, the London Stock Exchange experiences problems with the signals it receives from GPS satellites due to such inadvertent jamming.

Fortunately, as evidenced by the aims set out in the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security review, the UK is quickly coming to terms with this new age of threats and is looking to future technologies which can effectively secure the nation’s critical infrastructure.

Over the next few years, the GNSS landscape will undergo a radical change. New GNSS are being deployed by Europe (Galileo) and China (Beidou), GPS is undergoing an overhaul to GPS version 3, and the Russian system (GLONASS) is being modified to be more compatible with other systems. With more systems comes redundancy and resilience. The new and modified systems bring new services and diversity.

A new generation of multi-constellation, multi-frequency (MCMF) receivers provide security to a range of threats affecting GNSS, enabling high levels of robustness and security for time-stamping as demanded by financial trading regulators. In the event of an interference attack, the MCMF capabilities allow the receiver chips to access multiple systems simultaneously, switching seamlessly between over 100 satellites, cross-checking between signals for consistency, readjusting to the next available signal, or ignoring signals (either spoofed or generated in error), which don’t agree with others.

The European Galileo system will introduce the first civilian secure, encrypted GNSS signal, the Public Regulated Service (PRS), which will be available to government-authorised organisations; core financial infrastructures are candidates for inclusion. PRS adds additional resilience against interference and is very secure against spoofing. Combining the encrypted GNSS services with new MCMF receivers minimises the likelihood of system crashes and timestamp manipulation resulting from spoofing and jamming events.

The use of these additional services together with resilient receiver processing techniques and robust design of the overall timing and synchronisation sub-systems (e.g. using accurate atomic clocks disciplined by the GNSS timing signals) can effectively mitigate these threats. With the threat of interference significantly reduced, the financial trading sector can be effectively secured on an operational level, safeguarding its future in an era of growing technological threats.

The post Defending the UK’s financial trading sector appeared first on International Finance.

Data gathered from the vantage point of space provide critical information to help understand how the Earth works, how its regions undergo complex changes, and what policy-makers can do to mitigate them. Earth observation satellites have been used for years to gather such data, which is then used by agencies and institutions involved in development, aid and relief support.

In natural disasters-prone Asia, countries have high demand for meteorological observation systems to predict threats more precisely. For example, precipitation data gathered by satellites has great potential to be used to warn people living in areas at risk before a flood occurs. In addition, during and after a flood, high resolution images of inundated areas can support rescue and recovery operations.

“Space technology and associated geographic information systems (GIS) applications are highly valued due to the illustrative and easy-to-understand means of presenting complicated calculations and forecasts for policy makers, technical advisers and most especially field personnel,” explains ADB Space Technology Specialist Yusuke Muraki.

Information gathered from space, however, is not only useful when dealing with natural disasters and directing relief operations. It is used daily in sectors as diverse as transport, urban planning, agriculture and energy. In both the planning and construction phases of large infrastructure projects such as dams, pipelines or irrigation facilities, and the assessment of their environmental and social safeguards impact, space technology supports solutions that benefit millions in the region.

View from above

There are three categories of satellite technology used in development. These include: remote sensing, location and time information services (typically provided by systems such the USA’s global positioning system, better known by its acronym GPS), and communication and broadcasting.

“While all of them have practical applications in development, perhaps remote sensing offers the most interesting array of benefits to support operations,” says Muraki.

Remote sensing allows the collection of data and images of the territory, while GIS facilitate the management of data. When the two are used in tandem, the benefit for development operations can be game-changing.

“Satellite information provides objective information even though it requires some ground validation,” says Muraki.

Information provided by space agencies from around the world is made available to developing countries and institutions like ADB that do not have enough resources to collect independently fresh and accurate data.

Working together for a ‘higher’ purpose

ADB cooperates with institutions that have space technology capability such as Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the United States Department of Defense and, more recently, the European Space Agency (ESA) to use space-gathered information in ADB projects. An example of this cooperation is a brochurecomparing night sky views of Asia and the Pacific from 1992 to 2009 to reveal gaps in electrification.

In January 2012, ADB became a member of Sentinel Asia, an initiative that forges collaboration between space agencies and disaster management agencies to apply remote sensing and Web-GIS technologies in support of disaster management in the Asia-Pacific region.

ADB and JAXA also joined forces in a project that required the application of satellite rainfall data to support the national flood forecasting agencies in Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Viet Nam. The project assisted the three countries with the improvement of their monitoring and warning systems.

Recently, a project involving the trial of innovative new crop insurance products to give income protection from increasingly severe storms and natural disasters to small-holder farmers in Bangladesh was announced. In this project funded with a grant from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction, satellite-based rainfall data is used as supplement data source for the insurance.

Another project involving JAXA as technical adviser targets food security and subregional cooperation in the six countries of the Greater Mekong Subregion. Satellite-based drought monitoring systems using freely available satellite data will be developed for regional food security cooperation.

“Drought is a big issue in that region but they don’t have a standard tool to measure the situation in these countries,” Muraki explains.

“By providing the objective drought information using satellite technology all over the subregion, the policy makers can see the third party view of the situation of the drought.”

Source : Asian Development Bank

The post Eye in the Sky: Earth Observation in Aid of Development appeared first on International Finance.