Satellite communications aren't just about signals beaming down from orbit - they're about ground infrastructure that routes, secures, and manages IP traffic across increasingly complex networks. ST Engineering iDirect has spent over 40 years building that infrastructure: ground systems and IP-based satellite communications technology for operators and service providers worldwide. The threat surface is real and expanding as these systems touch more of the global connectivity stack.
The company's Intuition ground system represents its push toward cloud-native, multi-orbit architecture - designed to handle the operational complexity of managing satellites across different orbital planes with automation baked in. This isn't legacy satcom with a cloud sticker on it; the platform is built on standards-based technologies aimed at giving satellite operators more programmatic control over their networks.
Security work here lives at the intersection of critical infrastructure and communications protocols. The domains span satellite communications, ground systems engineering, IP-based networking, cloud-native systems, and automation - environments where a misconfigured policy or unpatched component can cascade across networks that serve military, enterprise, and telecom customers. The engineering challenge is keeping highly distributed, software-defined systems locked down without strangling the flexibility they're designed to provide.
