DigiCert selected to provide Root CA for AeroMACS

DigiCert has been selected to host the Root CA for Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communication System (AeroMACS), the only wireless technology that has been validated by major international regulatory bodies to support the safety and regularity of flight.

Thursday, 8th March 2018 Posted 6 years ago in by Phil Alsop

“AeroMACS provides a standardized, unified, and scalable security model for the aviation industry,” said Deepika Chauhan, Executive Vice President of Emerging Markets at DigiCert. “DigiCert PKI services will allow AeroMACS members, including aircraft, airports, ground services, and other authenticated members to securely communicate with each other.”

An initiative championed by the WiMAX Forum, AeroMACS enables ground-to-aircraft communications to support both current applications and new ones that require more bandwidth. AeroMACS supports increased transmission of Air Traffic Control and Airline Operations Communications to relieve traffic congestion and delays. An internationally recognized standard, AeroMACS is the only wireless technology that has been validated by EUROCONTROL, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

DigiCert is already well-engaged with other key AeroMACS stakeholders:

“We’ve worked with DigiCert since about 2009, when we selected them as the Primary CA for WiMAX,” said Declan Byrne, President of WiMAX Forum. “We began with VeriSign, which became Symantec, and is now DigiCert, and in all that time, with those organizational changes, their PKI services were always available and we have experienced no security events to date. It was an easy decision to appoint them to host the Root CA for AeroMACS, and to make them the first CA for WiMAX Forum members to secure their AeroMACS networks. In addition to being the main sponsor for WiMAX Forum at the ATM World Congress, DigiCert funded and participated in development of the main PKI documents that are now approved for AeroMACS – they are intimately familiar with what is needed for AeroMACS.”

“I first worked with VeriSign in 2003, when CableLabs was architecting its PKI to support cable service devices globally (such as cable modems, set top boxes, etc.),” said Oscar Marcia, President and CEO of Eonti, Inc. “The two-tiered PKI architecture anchored by a highly trusted Root CA has proven itself over the years, and that model is now considered the role model for other ecosystems that need large-scale PKI support. Working with VeriSign/Symantec/DigiCert, over 500 million device certificates have been issued to the CableLabs ecosystem, without having to revoke a single certificate. Eonti looks forward to working with DigiCert on the AeroMACS PKI.”

"Powertech is the WiMAX Forum Designated Certification Lab for AeroMACS,” said Eugene Crozier, Certification Lead for AeroMACS at Powertech Labs. "We are engaging with DigiCert to support clients requiring the AeroMACS Protocol Conformance Tests. We expect to see a deeper relationship develop in the very near future. The use of PKI applies to all of the protocol tests we will be conducting, such as with base stations, mobile stations, and subscriber stations."

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