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Air Sat One

Satellite Communications

Press Release

Issued by Air Sat One.

March 13, 2018

AirSatOne announces enhancements to satcom services with latest version of Flightstream SA

With the latest enhanced version of Flightstream SA, AirSatOne is the first aviation Satcom provider to offer HTTPS web filtering. With the new version of Flightstream SA, customers benefit from more flexibility and more security while surfing the web. Flightstream SA offers a full set of internet security and management features, and changes can be made through AirSatOne's customer portal at any time to a single aircraft, an entire fleet or a group of aircraft in a fleet, anywhere in the world.

HTTPS is an encrypted website connection which is indicated by the lock icon in the address bar. HTTPS' spread has been on the rise in the recent years, mostly because it is being encouraged by Google. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's latest report states that half of the internet is now protected by HTTPS. HTTPS uses port 443 by default but simply blocking port 443 means you are blindly blocking half of the internet. Your satcom service provider must use the latest technology to effectively manage HTTPS.

With AirSatOne's latest service enhancement to Flightstream SA aircraft operators can now control access to the internet by restricting or granting access to not only HTTP-based, but now also HTTPS-based web pages and services. Available features include domain/URL blacklist and whitelist, category-based blacklisting, file-type filtering and file-size filtering. Most importantly aviation specific encrypted web apps such as flight planning and weather services can be whitelisted to ensure connectivity while managing passenger access. For special mission operators or for customers using airborne internet for business-critical applications it is now possible to blacklist all web sites at once and whitelisti secure (HTTPS) web sites and software. Flightstream SA is deployed globally at the edge of the satcom network and the public internet. Being deployed globally is an important way of reducing hops and latency; the backbone and its efficiency matter to passengers on aircraft.

“AirSatOne has been providing network security and cyber security since we opened our doors in 2011. We have never left our customers unprotected and we have a mature product that just keeps getting better,” said Jo Kremsreiter, president of AirSatOne.