While no sabotage appears to have been perpetrated, the unsettling question remains — what are the Russians going to do with the data they collected?

While all these industries, especially their biggest players, tend to have extensive cybersecurity in place, it may not be as comprehensive as the nation would hope. In this case, instead of gaining access through the front door, where the alarm system was more robust, these hackers simply went around back and entered through the more vulnerable networks of third-party and supplier operations, relying on myriad techniques including the use of phishing emails infected with malware and the theft of credentials.

Needless to say, the scenario should send chills throughout the aviation industry. While major aircraft manufacturers and airlines make obvious targets because of the potential they represent to conspicuously disrupt international commerce, they also rank high on hackers’ to-do lists because they maintain global, highly interconnected supply chains that over the past few years have been aggressively digitizing operations. More digitization means more attack surface for hackers. The many links on aviation’s supply chain — some big, many small to midsize — all become potential vulnerabilities for aerospace giants, given the daunting task of ensuring that all vendors with access insist on the same level of rigor in both their cybersecurity and their employee training.

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