Connected Cars Vs. Cybercrime: Tough Fight
The sophisticated electronic components that are making modern cars safer, greener, and smarter are also making them dangerously vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Dealing with the threat will require automakers to think beyond typical preventive security measures such as encryption, strong authentication, and system segmentation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said in a report this week.
The report, and two others also released this week, summarizes the NHTSA's research on the security risks raised by the introduction of increasingly complex electronic components in modern cars.
[Achieving True IoT Integration With Insurance
It advocates the need for automakers to consider integrating real-time intrusion detection and response capabilities and methods for quickly extracting, analyzing, and disseminating threat data from compromised systems. Automakers and other industry stakeholders have until Dec. 8 to comment and respond to the report's findings.
"Our research across other industries indicates that prevention of cyber-threats would be impractical if not impossible," the NHTSA noted in advocating multi-layered defenses for next-generation automobiles.
The Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21) requires the NHTSA to review the need for new security and safety standards for electronic systems in passenger vehicles.
As part of that effort, the NHTSA has been directed to review the security implications of new electronic components in automobiles, the interaction of electronic components with other components, and the effect of surrounding environments on the electronic systems in a vehicle.
Read the full article on InformationWeek.
Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year ... View Full Bio
Tweet This