For the Carrier Strike Group to be effective, thousands of systems and applications across multiple platforms above and below the waves have to work together seamlessly. But this ever-increasing integration brings with it an increased risk of cyber attack. We spoke with Dr Alex Gray, System Engineer and Deputy Technical Director of Thales in the UK, to find out more.

What’s been your career journey up to this point? 

After doing a BSc and MSc in Biochemistry and Applied Zoology respectively at Bangor University, I went on to do a PhD in Invertebrate Neuropharmacology at University of West of England. After that, I took the equivalent of a career dog-leg and went straight to Thales as a Software Engineer before moving to Thales Secure Information and Communication Systems where I’m now Deputy Technical Director.

Can you tell us a bit about your role?

I’m responsible for a wide variety of programmes across the whole portfolio of the Thales business. One area of particular focus for my team and I is the network and security operations for Royal Navy vessels, as well as for other friendly Navies – and transferring and accessing huge volumes of mission-critical data reliably, safely and securely is one area Thales heavily invests in.

So protecting vessels from cyber attack?

In a word, yes. As more and more modern-day systems are integrated across multiple naval platforms, there’s an increased risk of cyber attack from adversaries. And as we’ve seen with various incidents in the public domain in recent years, once malware, spyware or a virus enters a network, it can expand extremely rapidly across a whole platform and cause all sorts of damage. That’s why Thales invests in creating both a network and security operations capability that allows the Royal Navy, among others, to monitor and prevent attacks in the first place. Or, if an attack does happen, to respond effectively to shut down or negate the threat. 

Of course, it’s about more than simply monitoring and prevention, it’s also about managing all of the infrastructure in a vessel day-to-day. This includes all the ongoing patches and upgrades we all have to do regularly on our home PCs, apps, and devices to make sure they’re protected from constantly evolving threats.

Can you talk more about how Thales helps the Royal Navy with its cyber security?

As well as always looking to improve a naval platform’s cyber resilience and protection, we want to enhance the functionality and performance of a naval platform’s digital backbone. But also between multiple platforms, for example, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and so on. Within a platform, it’s all about creating a resilient, shared infrastructure that enables you to send and receive data in the best possible way, so the right data gets to the right person at the right time. All while overcoming all the obstacles that come with handling data with different security classifications. 

We’re also enabling the sharing of huge volumes of sensor data across different security domains in a way that doesn’t allow secure data to leak down to unsecure channels, but does allow unsecure data to be brought up to a secure level for analysis. And in doing so,  better inform the decision-makers. In particular, Thales is investing in cross-domain solutions and IP filters to make sure that data can be held in transition securely and with prior knowledge of the data being transitioned.

What does the Carrier Strike Group represent for you?

To me, two things. First, the significant advantages it brings to the UK in its ability to project power. And second, it’s incredible capability when it comes to supporting operations wherever in the world we need to be. Be they combat operations, or humanitarian aid and disaster relief.

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