Hoops on the Horizon 26–08
Beautiful & Beastly PNT Risks
Beautiful and free, consumed by all, time is a critical enabling infrastructure for systemically important, multinational organizations. The designers and engineers who first conceived of global synchronized time were well ahead of their time (pun intended). The most disappointing aspect is how little disruption synchronized timing has had in more than three quarters of a century. Not disappointing for you or me, but disappointing because the timing invisible service layer has been marginalized. Timing is mission critical for many sectors that fall under national critical infrastructure guidance: PPD-21 — U.S., CER Directive — EU, and NIS/CCA — UK.
Most organizations with exquisite asset inventories don’t assign risk owners to timing assets or have limited awareness of grandmaster clocks (aka “GPS time servers” or “timing appliances”) as critical assets beyond the site’s direct purview. It’s not shocking, given the long history of stability in GNSS constellations, ground segments, and national/UTC references. And, the world has seen a sharp increase in GNSS denial and manipulation from the Baltics to the Black and Red Seas to the SoH. While important, hostile actors are not the only crocodiles near the canoe.
Hostile and disruptive activities coincide with the return of realpolitik, a pragmatic and abrasive execution of national power. In much of the world, electromagnetic interference (EMI) is rising. Lithuania has observed an increase in the numbers of antennae in Kaliningrad (Russian Federation) since 2025, matching shorter-wave radio frequency (L-band) transmission. Meanwhile, in neighboring Poland, there have been PNT denials for as much as 20% of July across its sovereign territory, almost 150 hours. This jamming has disrupted mass transit, shipping, and aviation. This phenomena is impacting important flights including those of the Spanish Defence Minister (Margarita Robles) and the European Commission President (Ursula von der Leyen) to name a few. The activity and timing do not appear to be accidental. [1]
Understanding an ever-expanding set of vulnerable and critical assets hostile actors target within your organization is key to fixing your timing truth. Threat vectors and TTPs can severely impact operations via timing appliances. According to studies by the Technical University of Munich and Siemens, “PTP delay attacks …[show] how targeted path asymmetry can move clocks without easy detection.” [2] This undermines organizational truth and exploits a lack of awareness of internal timing infrastructure, especially when it is not protected as a critical asset.
Ai adds detection value and increases the attack surface. Timing is an essential control input for industrial automation environments. Controlling timing dependencies and infrastructure helps guarantee truth in OT environments. At the same time, truth should be guarded against external AI threats and overzealous internal AI models responding to timing drift. Protecting timing sync is almost as upstream a service as power, water, wastewater, and raw material delivery. [2] Setting and segmenting that truth with clear failover can help avoid tragedy. Finding and fixing timing truth speeds recovery when an exploited misconfiguration or offnet disruption occurs.
Hostile actions are dangerous, but a more systemic and painful PNT impact is anticipated within the decade. The essential dependency on GNSS’s withering infrastructure needs to be brought into the light, as billions in investment are gridlocked in U.S. legislative and executive branch disputes. Multi-GNSS-capable solutions are breaking the GPS dependencies inherited since the U.S. military gifted the world its first commercially available GNSS solution (1980-2000). A new interconnected nature of space-based PNT solutions should be good for business, but spaceborne solutions don’t stand alone. NTP-dependent systems are expected to face major issues first in 2036 and then for all Unix systems later in 2038. The Y2K38 fatal errors are anticipated within embedded systems like ABS, cell phones, routers, and I/O devices. The Epochalypse of 2038 is far enough away to identify a solution, but it brings into focus why the time to prepare is now. Site experts with critical insights into time sync assets should be incentivized to transfer wisdom to newer generations before heading into retirement. Experts from across sectors can help resolve the ’36 and ’38 issues.
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Time sync is a shared service between OT and IT environments, so organizations need to confirm or assign asset owners for time-related assets. Timing synchronization is an IT challenge, but the precision required in industrial automation environments has real consequences for safety, productivity, and maintenance cost. Most IT shops only require NTP-based timing sync for email, logs, and network sync between IT systems. Precision timing (PTP, IEEE 1588) solutions are a core component of OT operations where equipment automation requires coordination within nanoseconds (< 1 µs) between multiple NICs or MACs.
Ugly and real, timing architectures are under increasing pressure. This includes legacy geosynchronous constellations, retroactive protocol adjustments (e.g., NTPSec), and a geopolitical trend that complexifies the work required to address and coordinate this global problem. The simple standard protocols and the low radio frequency range (L band, 1164–1610 MHz) are prone to hostile denial and manipulation. The design for device PNT consumption was to function with limited battery drain, accessible from the darkest corners of Earth. Oddly, amateur radio broadcasts, military communications, and avionics are transmitted within the same L-band range.
While Y2K38 may seem far off, the communities that rely on this vital service can proactively dig in and transition operations. In part, PNT requires us all to educate ourselves and others on the challenge at hand. While important, defensible timing sync is not enough. And, the impact is uber-sectorial crossing aviation, chemical manufacturing, health tech, high-tech microprocessor and semiconductor manufacturing, maritime and transportation systems, and many others. When we hear about PNT denial in the SoH, the tendency is to focus on the P & N of PNT, but the risk of an airport drifting into the North Sea is far less consequential than that of two timed lasers cutting new chips or than the mixture rates of insulin in a batch line.
- Learn & Expand PNT Awareness: Getting educated and raising awareness of the fragility of timing synchronization helps experts have fertile soil to sow seeds for secure and resilient PNT. Some maritime insurers are providing breaks for using certain PNT mitigations like IMUs and INUs. It matters to more than just the maritime sector. Find your resident PNT expert and talk to him/her about the subject.
- PNT Resilience Options: Learning about PNT resilience and mitigation solutions is how to take your education to the next level. Now that you know about INUs, learn how they work and how they keep PNT stable in denied SATCOM scenarios. Learn about how Timing as a Service (TaaS) functions, what solutions exist, and which solutions are best for your organization.
- Support Official PNT Bodies: Supporting or getting involved with the IEEE Y2038-Class Rollover Readiness Working Group (YCRRWG), The IETF Network Time Protocols (NTP) Working Group, and The Epochalypse Project & Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) Standards Committee are great ways to get involved with solutioning and preparing for the future.
