Dive Brief:
- Airlines across North America plan to make significant investments in cybersecurity and AI as the aviation sector focuses on upgrading its aging IT infrastructure, according to a report released Monday by SITA.
- Nearly eight out of every 10 carriers in North America ranked cybersecurity as one of their top three IT priorities during 2025, with nearly half of these carriers citing cybersecurity as their top priority. Meanwhile, almost half of these same carriers place AI investment at number one.
- Airline industry officials consider third-party risk as their leading cybersecurity concern.
Dive Insight:
The report comes at a time of heightened concern over cyber risk and the ability of airlines to operate in an efficient and safe manner due to the industry’s aging IT infrastructure.
Airlines have been operating flights at nearly full capacity in recent years and have faced a series of major disruptions linked to aging technology or software security issues.
Delta Air Lines, for instance, canceled thousands of flights in July 2024 after a global IT outage occurred due to a faulty software upgrade. In September, the Port of Seattle was hit by a ransomware attack linked to the Rhysida ransomware threat group.
The industry is already heavily investing in three areas of cybersecurity spending: privileged account management, single sign-on authentication and DDoS protection, according to the report.
AI investments are focused on cybersecurity, operational scaling and predictive disruption management.
A report released in April by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies highlighted the growing concerns about cyber risk and aging technology, and called on the Federal Aviation Administration to conduct a comprehensive modernization program as well as comprehensive vulnerability and risk assessments.
The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held a hearing in September 2024 on cyber risks facing the aviation industry.