Bill Boldt
Business Development Manager, Security
BlackBerry
Cars have been a society
transforming technology whose impact has rivaled that of public
sanitation, antibiotics, jet travel, telephone, and electricity. Over
time, the car has functioned as a status symbol, a rite of adolescent passage,
provider of personal freedom, enabler of the formation of the middle class, and
the catalyst of mass assembly and consumerism.
THE EMERGING CAR-BOT
The next transformative event
involving cars is already upon us, and it is a really big deal; namely, the
"Car-Bot." Cars are becoming self-propelled robots, and
the Tesla with Autopilot is the poster child car-bot. Autopilot
truly does take the wheel and completely drive the car under certain
conditions, like the highway. That is simply amazing. Beyond Tesla, every
car company, including new ones that are popping up, are going after assisted
and autonomous driving. The established carmakers (or "OEMs" in
auto-industry argot) are just slower to make that happen since they
actually have to run an industry with an existing manufacturing and
distribution infrastructure and not just conduct a large scale science project
that hit the road. When the big guys get going we will see even more
amazing things and on a scale that will change not just individuals'
lifestyles, but cities, economies, and society itself.
SOFTWARE-DEFINED VEHICLE
All car makers know the car of the
future will be defined mainly by the software that gives it personality,
purpose, and features. The “software-defined car" will
catalyze transformation including new ownership models such as shared or
fractional and updatable performance and features. There are already
signs of fractional ownership and pay as you go usage. That is the Uber-effect.
Designs are already being presented for small buses ("bus-bots") that
drive themselves to help ameliorate the crush of urbanization. The
bus-bot can solve important problems that urbanization poses, such as better
resource utilization, reducing pollution, improved road safety, and less road
congestion.
AUTOMOBILITY PLATFORM
The platform formerly known as the
car is becoming a networked, sensing-actuating, connected, computer system of
systems . Sensors and actuators will communicate over a range of evolving
electrical communications buses to act in a coordinated organic way, controlled
by sophisticated integrated
software and hardware inside and outside of the platform/vehicle. The
software and hardware must be cryptographically super-secure to create a truly
safe system (i.e. one with very few crashes). Cryptographic security
means that mathematical algorithms like those used to secure electronic
commerce web sites will be embedded into the vehicle and used to communicate to
the vehicle. This is known as Public Key Infrastructure (“PKI”) and
ensures that the signals that sense and control things cannot be hacked,
corrupted, or monitored.
Cryptography
maintains the confidentiality, data integrity, and authentication (the three
pillars of security) of the various signals inside the car, between cars, and
between cars and infrastructure to ensure safety, security, and
reliability. More on that later.
ORGANIC
EVOLUTION
The
move to the car-bot started fairly humbly with in-vehicle entertainment, but
will end up growing into a virtual organism of
transportation-communication-and-lifestyle. It is as if car radios,
GPS, and cell phones were like single-cell organisms that materialized
independently, but then linked up into multi-cell organisms. More linkage
is happening and the organism is evolving further. Infotainment (the
first linkage) is already linking with instrument clusters, ADAS, and
more. Hypervisors are making this happen.
What
really made the linkage of segregated systems possible was the right kind of
operating system. And, in the case of a car it had to be safe, secure,
and reliable. Those three items cannot be
over-emphasized. Just ask car companies that made the mistake of not using the right type of operating system and had to go back to the drawing board.
In
parallel to the cockpit electronics evolution, there were other evolutionary
branches on the locomotion and safety fronts that included Electronic Control
Units (ECUs). ECUs are little computers that intelligently control
physical things like mirrors, lights, seats, AC, and other things in the body
or cockpit. More importantly, ECUs made for better control of
brakes, engine systems, airbags, and other things that make the car stop and go
and become safer.
ECUs
started out as discrete items that did one thing, but quickly became connected
via in-car networks of various types such as CAN, LIN, MOST, Ethernet,
etc. These networks are like the prototypical spinal/nervous system in
early vertebrates. In addition, ECUs (little brains) are becoming
larger and capable of doing many more things at once (bigger
brains). This is represented by emerging domain controllers that
are leveraging the amazing advancements in multi-core processing and
architecture.
BECOMING
SENTIENT
Now
that electrical automotive vertebrates have shown up, the evolutionary stage is
being set for the omega point (i.e. the ultimate stage of evolution):
Sentience. Sentience means self-aware and self-controlled.
However, it is not just the vehicle that will become self-aware, it is
the entire ecosystem that contains the smart vehicle, the cloud, and the
smart/communicating cyber-physical infrastructure that interacts with it.
Note
again that none of this can be possible without robust cryptographic security.
Security is a leitmotif that will show up throughout the entire system. It must
be everywhere at all times. The sentient car-bot ecosystem will contain
smart sensors, distributed processing systems, multi-level security,
transmitters and receivers, and service providers, among others. The
bottom line is this: No security, no
sentient car for you.
THE
TRIAD: SAFETY, SECURITY, AND RELIABILITY
There
are strong forces that are driving the software-defined, sentient car-bot
evolution. What underpins all of these forces is that each will require
the triad of Safety, Security, and
Reliability. The triad must be present in all the systems in
the vehicle from infotainment to instrument clusters, to body control, to engine
control, etc.. The triad must be present at all times when
the systems communicate with each other, with other vehicles, and with the
infrastructure. The systems have to be secure even at rest to fight off
attacks. Service providers must provide services that are safe,
secure, and reliable.
Subscribers and vehicle owners will abandon products and services that are weak on any of the parameters. The invisible hand of the market (as coined by Adam Smith) will kill companies and solutions that are not safe, secure, and reliable. Respect the Triad!
Subscribers and vehicle owners will abandon products and services that are weak on any of the parameters. The invisible hand of the market (as coined by Adam Smith) will kill companies and solutions that are not safe, secure, and reliable. Respect the Triad!
Safety,
security, and reliability must be forethoughts. They are not products or
features that can be offered as options. They cannot be bolted
on. All three must be infused into everything at birth. It
is not hard to see that the parts of the triad are inseparable, meaning you
cannot provide one without the other: Can something be safe if it is not
secure? Can it be reliable without being safe? Can it be
reliable without being secure. Clearly not. The triad is the DNA of
the software-defined car.
Other
articles will explore how designing with the triad in mind can make the
software-defined future easier to create. Hint: it will require a
safe, secure, and reliable operating system and end to end security.
In the
meantime, please take a look at the QNX operating system and the security
products from Certicom that secure the manufacturing supply chain and securely
manage cryptographic keys and certificates. Doing so will help you
understand Blackberry makes autmotive not just secure, but BlackBerry Secure.
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