The Role of Cybersecurity in Autonomous Vehicle Development
Posted: January 23, 2024
The importance of cybersecurity is growing with the development of more autonomous cars.
Ali Shahrokni is SystemWeaver’s own in-house cybersecurity expert, and with his many years of experience in the field, as well as a PhD, we wanted to pick his brain for insights and thoughts he has on the subject.
Why are you working with SystemWeaver?
I think it’s a very good product, and a company that suits me well, because you work with many different customers, you work with broad issues and try to get a flow in the process and data at customer companies. It suits my way of thinking, and my personality. There are many different areas and activities; how do we put them together? Both from a process perspective, and organizationally. There are people behind these processes, not just software. How do you make things easier for engineers? It’s fun in that way.
Then there is the aspect of, we are not a huge company, but we are competing with large companies and within a broad domain, so you have to work smart and focus on the right things, and constantly be active and alert.
Often in engineering, you have to do with nature and natural laws and the engineer designs a controlled system according to these laws, but in cybersecurity, you have to do with the thoughts and intentions of others, so you have to think a lot about how people think. Do they think maliciously? How do we counter it? It is perhaps what is a little more unique compared to the rest of the development in the automotive industry.
What challenges do you see for cybersecurity in the future?
Something that always happens and will continue to happen is that we get more powerful computers, so many of the protection mechanisms we have relied on for a long time will be possible to break through with more powerful computers. It will be a big challenge, you need to think differently, increase security, and update legacy systems. Make them safe. And at the same time, if you think in the automotive industry, a lot of what hasn’t been in the scope of cybersecurity, that you haven’t had to protect from external actors, is being opened up, you need to protect what didn’t need protection before.
Another huge challenge will be how to handle it organizationally, how to handle it when there is an attack, and how quickly can you respond and protect. Against that particular attack, how can you prevent it and how do you solve the root cause? How quickly can you update software, and so on? Historically, the software in cars has largely been constant, you program it when it leaves the factory and then you’re done. But that’s also changing, the software is more alive and up-to-date. It presents both challenges and opportunities for cybersecurity; to protect over time.
How have the demands on cybersecurity changed?
Well, there is legislation now that all cars that are released must take cybersecurity into account, and that is a new requirement. And then you open up communication with the outside world in cars more and more, and old and new systems in cars will live side by side, and both of those aspects are relatively new.
What are you excited about in the next five to ten years?
I think that the mechanical part in cars will be simplified and standardized quite a lot, the software close to the hardware will become more standardized, and so there will be a lot of innovation and new ways of thinking about the more abstract part of the software, which has happened in many other industries. But it hasn’t happened at that level in large systems development.
Much will change, and there will be more standardization at the lower levels where a lot of effort was put into development traditionally, the applications will be diversified, and then autonomous driving will be developed. And I think the whole industry and the way people relate to cars will change. Maybe we won’t be ready in five years, but I think in 20 years at least the way we look at cars will have changed a lot. Who remembers what the world looked like before smartphones… they are such a natural part of our everyday life now. I think a similar transformation will take place with cars as well. And of course, there will be challenges from a cybersecurity perspective there as well. But this very thing with the engineer’s and the organization’s way of looking at cars and how you organize yourself to create a car will change a lot. And I think it will be very disruptive to the entire industry.
I think many of the players who have been very obvious and established will disappear or deeply transform. There will be new players who invest more in software. It’s not just traditional software development, it’s legal requirements, safety, and security that will have to be dealt with. How will engineers who are not used to this kind of rigorous development handle it? It will be a challenge.
When it comes to cars, I think development will go in the direction that most people think. More autonomous and alive, updated. Vehicles will become more like robots on wheels as they say. I don’t know if I’m looking forward to it. It’s fun to drive yourself sometimes too.
The various systems in the car have been like silos historically; software, hardware, ac, doors, windows, and so on, then you, as OEM, put all those systems together. But now, you start by building a hardware platform, and then the software must come on top of the platform that already exists, instead of the software already lying on dedicated hardware. The car will be seen more as a platform with its own resources that you can use to perform a task. So software development will become more generic I think, it’s interesting and will shake up the whole industry, but it will make development go faster, and it will be very software intensive. Software companies will ultimately rule this part of the automotive industry. Just like how it is for phones now.
“Software companies will ultimately rule this part of the automotive industry.”
The car may become the first type of robot in society. And who knows how AI will develop? It will be interesting to see. You never know, you can speculate, but it will always be something else.
