Projects funded for autonomous vehicle cyber security

Seven projects whose participants include Honda, Thales and WMG have won funding to develop cyber security solutions for connected and autonomous vehicles.

The £1.2m award has been made by Zenzic, an organisation dedicated to making the UK a world leader in connected and autonomous mobility.

According to Zenzic, the Cyber Securities Feasibility studies competition is part-funded by the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) and delivered in partnership with Innovate UK.

In a statement, Richard Porter, Zenzic’s technology and innovation director said: “With the advent of self-driving vehicles, the complexity of cyber defences will increase as thousands of vehicles, pieces of road-side infrastructure and connecting systems need to share data securely. This is an opportunity for the UK to build on the decades of experience we already have and once again set the standards for the rest of the world to follow.”

Zenzic’s UK Connected and Automated Mobility Roadmap to 2030 highlights cyber resilience as the most significant technical challenge to be solved before the UK can benefit from self-driving vehicles on roads, which will need to communicate with other vehicles, infrastructure and third-party services.

The cyber security competition winners will focus on finding ways to measure and maintain cyber-physical resilience and identify vulnerabilities, provide specifications to support the creation of new cyber test facilities for connected and self-driving vehicles, and explore commercial opportunities to develop new cyber-related services.

“The connected and self-driving vehicle sector is set to be worth £62bn by 2030, with safer roads and smoother, more accessible journeys for all,” said future of transport minister, George Freeman. “Whether we’re turning cars into Wi-Fi connected hotspots or equipping them with millions of lines of code, we must consider the new challenges of putting this technology into practice. Today’s £1.2m funding boost will help to guarantee the future safety and security of self-driving vehicles, both in the UK and globally.”

Seven projects have been awarded funding:

ResiCAV – HORIBA MIRA, BT, CFMS Services, Oxfordshire County Council, Techworks, Thales, WMG
The use of current tools and techniques applied to static analysis of vehicles will be applied to real-time monitoring and response. It will develop requirements for a cyber security operations centre and extend the application of AI and data visualisation techniques.

CAVShield – Honda R&D Europe (UK) Ltd, IBM, Nexor, Toshiba, Bristol University
Focuses on the data privacy aspects of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) to identify methodologies for real-time identification and measurement of vulnerabilities in CAV networks to enable widespread implementation to protect large vehicle fleets. This includes long-term commercial viability of cyber-related services for the CAM industry.

Project Meili – IDIADA UK, Crypta Labs, Teskalabs
Evaluation of new cybersecurity risks arising from the increasing connectivity in modern vehicles. Based on the network analysis performed and the threats uncovered, a modular hardware and software platform will be defined and demonstrated to test and evaluate the impact of C-ITS on traffic safety, driver confidence, and infrastructure development.

V2X Vulnerability Mapping – F-Secure
Development and application of testing methodologies for V2X infrastructure that are effective in providing comprehensive technical assessment of cyber risk exposure in a cost-effective and scalable manner, while allowing focused detection on the points that matter most.

PNT Cyber Resilience – Spirent, WMG
Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) products and services will be examined to demonstrate and determine the feasibility of a new observer-based technique to ‘attack’ and test CAV PNT-related functions in both controlled and real-world scenarios.

DT-4-CT – Chilton Computing, Huduma, Oxfordshire County Council, Science and Technology Facilities Council
Researching cybersecurity threats to connected vehicle networks and proposing a cybersecurity testing methodology using a digital twinning approach to identify and measure dynamic threats and suggest mitigation strategies.

BeARCAT – Cisco, Millbrook Proving Ground, Telefonica UK, WMG
BeARCAT will explore the feasibility of a coherent, holistic approach to Cybersecurity testing for connected vehicle networks in the UK through CAV Testbeds.

source theengineer

Industry: Cyber Security & Artificial Intelligence/AI