Collins Aerospace Ransomware: Lessons for Telecoms
A recent ransomware assault on Collins Aerospace’s check-in and boarding systems recently paralysed major hubs in Heathrow, Brussels and Berlin. The outage rippled across Europe, grounding flights and stranding passengers. More significantly, the event exposed systemic weaknesses in aviation’s reliance on third-party providers and ageing infrastructure.
Cybersecurity experts warn that while the immediate disruption was severe, the strategic lessons stretch well beyond aviation. The incident is now a case study for any sector that depends on high-speed, high-availability networks, including telecommunications.
Supply chain exposure in interconnected networks
For Cody Barrow, CEO of EclecticIQ, the attack illustrates the dangers of centralised dependency. “By targeting a single vendor, attackers were able to disrupt airports across multiple countries,” he says. He argues that cyber resilience should be treated with the same urgency as physical safety in aviation.
“That means building redundancy, running realistic contingency exercises and ensuring threat intelligence flows quickly between partners. We should expect incidents like this to become more frequent and the sector must treat cyber resilience with the same urgency as physical safety.”
Telcos face similar challenges. With fibre, 5G and cloud interconnections spanning multiple jurisdictions, a single supplier weakness could cascade through global networks. Building redundancy into vendor agreements and testing failover capabilities must become standard practice.
Legacy systems and the telecom threatscape
Matt Saunders, Field CTO at Adaptavist, points to the ageing technology landscape underpinning aviation systems. “When the entry point of a major cyber attack is still unknown, scrutiny will inevitably fall on weak spots in the everyday systems used by millions of passengers and whether their personal data has been involved,” he notes.
He warns that legacy systems represent “an open target” and predicts copycat attacks will follow. “The aviation sector is particularly exposed as it leans heavily on ageing, legacy systems never designed for today’s cyber threatscape. They are an open target and we’ve already seen the attack start to spread across Europe.”
For telecoms, the lesson is clear: retiring legacy equipment and accelerating adoption of zero-trust architectures, encryption and timely patching are essential for protecting high-volume, always-on networks.
Contingency planning with 5G and edge computing
White hat hacker Mantas Sabeckis highlights how airports reverted to manual operations and paper-based systems to maintain safety during the outage.
“This past weekend, millions of travellers faced a modern nightmare: delays, cancellations and chaos. It’s very much the reality of today’s hyperconnected infrastructure. This shows how hidden cyber risks can be. It also shows how unprepared many important systems are for these kinds of threats.”
Although crude, manual backups allowed operations to continue. Telecom providers need their own form of fallback planning, from 5G redundancy and multi-route fibre to edge computing nodes that can localise operations when core systems fail.
Cybersecurity as national and telecom security
The attack underlines the geopolitical dimension of cyber conflict. Terrorism law watchdog Jonathan Hall KC suggests that state-sponsored actors cannot be ruled out, given the strategic importance of airports. The same applies to telecoms, where networks support not just commerce but national defence and emergency response.
Beyond compliance: Proactive resilience for telecoms
James Griffin, CEO of CyberSentriq, stresses that resilience cannot be left to regulation alone. “The disruption at Europe’s airports proves that cyber resilience is not an abstract concept, it is a business and societal necessity,” he says. “However, regulation alone is not a silver bullet. The industry itself must embrace collective responsibility, where every organisation takes ownership of its role in safeguarding data, services and ultimately, trust.”
For telecoms, upcoming frameworks like the UK’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill are important, but active vendor risk monitoring, rigorous incident testing and evidence-based assurance must be embedded into daily operations.
Protecting trust in telecom ecosystems
Dominic Ryles, Sales and Alliance Director at Exertis Cybersecurity, concludes with a stark reminder: “For many organisations, the infrastructure they rely on isn’t fully under their control. That means a weakness somewhere in your supply chain or a vendor’s software can be just as dangerous as a breach inside your own network. When things go wrong, every minute of downtime costs more than just money – it damages trust.”
Telecom providers sit at the centre of digital society. Resilience cannot stop at core infrastructure; it must extend across partner ecosystems and customer-facing services. Redundancy, proactive monitoring, incident readiness and continuous testing are no longer optional.
The Collins Aerospace incident demonstrates how a single point of failure can cascade across borders and industries. For telecom leaders, the lesson is clear: invest in sovereign, resilient networks now, from 5G to edge, or risk systemic disruption tomorrow.
