Masterarbeit im Studiengang IT-Sicherheit von Per Philipp Schneider: Potentials and Challenges of Satellite Internet for Critical Infrastructures in case of an Internet Connection Failure

The ongoing digitalization of critical infrastructures has significantly increased their dependence on internet connectivity. Disruptions to essential submarine cables, which form the backbone of internet access, can abruptly isolate highly digitalized regions from the internet for extended periods. The rapid development of satellite constellations for broadband internet in recent years presents new opportunities for internet provisioning. This study aims to explore potentials and limitations of satellite internet for maintaining best possible continuous operation of critical infrastructures during outages of terrestrial cable connections. Existing research does not provide systematic methodologies to address this issue. Thus, a novel framework is proposed to analyze the problem in a structured manner. The methodology identifies internet-dependent processes within an infrastructure and assesses their internet requirements. These requirements are then compared against the performance parameters of a selected satellite constellation. Based on the feasibility of maintaining operation of these processes, the analysis is extended to more complex structures to evaluate operational viability in these cases. The framework was applied to the medical services subsector within the healthcare sector and the financial transactions subsector within the finance sector, using the Starlink satellite constellation. Results show that Starlink can support most identified processes and holds significant potential for sustaining the operation of complex infrastructures in these two subsectors. However, in some scenarios, limitations arise due to Starlink’s limited uplink capabilities and increased latency. The flexibility of the developed framework enables future research to analyze additional sectors, incorporate new satellite constellations, or extend existing analyses by including newly identified processes.

Betreuer: Jonas Franken
Prüfer: Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Reuter