Cyber Security for Autonomous Vehicles

Charles Eagan, Chief Technology Officer, BlackBerry joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss cyber security for autonomous and electric vehicles.

The conversation begins with Charles sharing the current state of the cyber security market as it relates to electric and autonomous vehicles.

The more software, the more network connectivity, and the more autonomous behaviors you have along with that comes a reciprocal cyber impact.

– Charles Eagan

As cars get smarter, the cyber security risks increase.

What I am hoping is that cars will become much more secure than cell phones, because we will learn from the computer attacks, the cell phone attacks, the networking attacks and then we can take those best practices and make sure we are applying them.

– Charles Eagan

The risks increase when the vehicle infrastructure becomes connected. For example, when a consumer plugs their vehicle into charge they are mostly unaware of the cyber risks. Plugging a simple charging cable into an electric vehicle could potentially be a cyber security risk with real-world consequences.

The vulnerabilities that exist in today’s Government infrastructure or computer infrastructure, those vulnerabilities will also apply to the EV infrastructure.

– Charles Eagan

The big challenge becomes how do we make software-defined infrastructure and vehicles secure against cyber attacks from Nation-State actors. Attacking the infrastructure and locking electric vehicles to the charger for example could cause severe economic damage.

To help mitigate the risks, we have to audit the software supply-chain and ensure that only the software intended for the vehicle is being used. This becomes critically important as society begins to shift towards over-the-air updates and autonomous vehicles.

With a software-defined vehicle comes payments. In the future vehicles, will have a payment layer built into them which allow either the driver or passengers to conduct commerce. To ensure a secure transaction, the payments will have to be secured with identity information.

The more connected, and the more vehicles, and the more software, the more monitoring that you need to do.

– Charles Eagan

To monitor vehicles and the enterprise, Blackberry created CylanceGUARD. Monitoring allows Blackberry on behalf of customers to monitor the behavior of the network and determine if the unexpected happened. If the unexpected happens, Blackberry notifies the proper authorities who implement their action plan.

Wrapping up the conversation, Charles shares his insights into how Blackberry is approaching cyber security for autonomous vehicles.