Short answer: Sagi Waitzman says regulators now treat cyber attacks as a safety issue; a pilot tablet route changed by one degree or a miscalculated baggage weight could affect fuel, takeoff, cost and safety.
Watch this answer from Episode 28 (starts at 9:51) · Episode 28 notes and transcript
From Episode 28: Why You Can't Pen Test an Airplane — AI Cybersecurity for Aviation, starting at 9:51.
Sam Nadler [9:50]: Sorry. You mentioned new regulations that are on the horizon. I think you mentioned in 2026. What's changing that is is, a, important for airlines to adopt and, is critical for you to help them adopt it?
Sagi Waitzman [10:08]: I think that what changes, it's that people now understand that cyber can affect the safety of the plane. Okay? At the end, when something is talking about safety, until now they saw that the plan, if you have a malfunction, you have fire, something on the plane, some scrawlers, I don't know. This is safety. And if the computer works, then everything is okay. But now they said that cyber attack, it's something that it's safe for the plane. And besides safety, it I think that I don't know if cyber will get a plane down from the air. Okay? But think about the effect from the media if some airplane won't fly because there was some movie of explosion in the entertainment system. Like, there are so many things that can affect how the people see the company, the airline, and can affect the money of the so the money of the airline. And if you think about it, even if somebody you know, the pilots have a tablet that in the tablet, they got all the pilot have all the route of the plane. So if somebody just change by one degree, okay, the route, a single word when you fly between a continent and the what is one degree? So it can even mean that the plane won't have enough fuel to land when it's in it where it needs to land. It can cost a lot of money to the airline. And once we enter this, once I entered personally to the aviation industry, understand that everything is about money, the weight of the airplane.
Sagi Waitzman [12:09]: Like, a thing that people don't understand, even if the weight that the system have inside, let's say the baggage. You remember you put all your baggage and then they take it to the plane, and the pilot have the all the weight of the baggage and where it's located on the plane. This affect the long how long the runway is need to be to take off, what is the speed. Think about it that the weight isn't calculated right. It can affect the way the plane will take off. It will affect the fuel that it needs to have. It affects so many things that people just don't understand. It's can it can be safety. It costs money. It mean it cost time. I mean, the plane might not get to its destination. So I think now the industry understand that cyber can affect all of this information that is collected from many system and not only the IT that is on the ground, like the ticketing system and stuff like this.
