Cyber Security Must Be A Priority For The Automotive Industry

Auto Tech Outlook | Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Organizations and consumers have to consider the myriad of cyber security risks as the future of automobiles takes shape.

FREMONT, CA: Most people probably couldn't imagine their automobiles vulnerable to cyber security threats like hacking. But with the fast growth of connected objects of all types in the Internet of Things (IoT)—including vehicles—these concerns have grown into a distinct possibility.

Counting to the mix in vehicular Security is the emergence of self-driving cars. In future years, we expect to see more robotic vehicles moving along city and suburban streets and highways. With all the added intelligence, automobiles are becoming traveling computers.

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Considering these and other developments in the mobile cyber security landscape, Security in the automotive industry has become more challenging and complex. For example, automakers today must ensure driver and passenger safety when designing and building vehicles; they also need to account for likely information security weaknesses in their products.

The high efforts to make vehicles more connected, automated, and driverless will change vehicles as product innovation, competition, and consumer demand drive the integration of the latest technologies and services.

The switch from an environment of independent, closed vehicle systems to one connected to vehicle ecosystems portrays a historical reshaping of the opportunity and risk equation for the marketplace. This is exceptionally true when considering the maturity of cyber security capabilities and risks.

The IoT is the 'information value loop,' after which sensors & machines can cycle using the stages of creating, communicating, aggregating, testing, and acting upon data. When the sum of those decisions & actions is the safety of human passengers, it is critical to ensure any vehicle ecosystem has three mutually reinforcing properties.

One of the three properties is Security. Next is vigilance. Hardware and software can demean, the nature and intensity of attacks can change, and no level of Security is perfect; Security must be completed by monitoring to determine whether a system is still secure or has been compromised.

The third property is resilience. When a breach occurs, confining the damage and reestablishing normal operations are much more easily and efficiently done when processes are in place to neutralize threats, prevent further spread, and recover rapidly.

Vigilance and resilience are essential components of cyber risk management and information security in more common information ecosystems. However, if the future vehicles influence the same technologies, we detect on our home computers, networks, and mobile devices, then are they not affected by the same vulnerabilities and sensitivities?

Organizations and consumers have to consider the myriad of cyber security risks as the future of automobiles takes shape. The risks surpass the loss of data or a minor inconvenience. For example, the firm cites the World Economic Forum as indicating that hacking the location data on a car is simply an invasion of privacy, whereas hacking the control system of a car would be a threat to life.

Securing individual sensors is perhaps most significant in today's connected car, a data center on wheels full of Internet-connected features. A normal vehicle today comprises about 70 computational systems running up to 100 million lines of programming code.

An advanced form of artificial intelligence—is driving significant change for autonomous cars and the automotive & transportation industry. The study projects that by 2030, the latest mobility services segment bound to products and services allied with autonomy, mobility, and connectivity will be worth more than $1 trillion globally. Cyber Security in the automotive sector will just grow in importance as vehicles depend on more intelligence in the future.

The direct effects of deep learning will revolutionize the nature of doing business for automakers. In addition, deep learning is crucial in building self-driving vehicles that can operate without human intervention. As a result, it expedites autonomy faster than anyone could have imagined, and it has far-reaching implications for the industry and societal mobility.

The coming days in automotive product development and manufacturing will highlight the vehicle's nervous system, comprising a computer "brain," sensors, controls, driver interaction & data storage. This will imply a great shift in organizational structure, talent acquisition, and operating models for most car manufacturers. It also means vehicle manufacturers must keep cyber Security in mind throughout production.

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