New UK goverment issued guidelines for smart cars will seek to ensure cybersecurity

With internet-connected vehicles becoming more and more common, questions about their security are raising. In order to ensure that car manufactures are doing everything they can to guarantee the safety of their smart vehicles, the British government has issued new guidelines. The government expressed concerns about smart cars being hacked, which could lead to hackers getting access to personal data or the car itself.

“Whether we’re turning cars into wifi connected hotspots or equipping them with millions of lines of code to create fully autonomous vehicles, cars are more vulnerable than ever to hacking and data theft,” the post on the gov.uk website states.

Briefly about the 8 new principles

The new guidelines will hopefully ensure that vehicle manufacturers take cyber security seriously and provide sufficient protections against hacking, as well as secure the privacy of the car owners. The new guidelines include ensuring that security is a priority on a broad level, making vehicle security last a lifetime, guaranteeing that the system is able to withstand receiving corrupt data or commands, as well as being able to delete personal files from the system.

Principle 4 states that all organizations involved in the making of the vehicle need to work together to enhance the security of the system. They will also have to provide assurance in the form of validation or certifications for their security processes and products.

The new guidelines make it clear that user data must be secured whether it is stored or transmitted. How private data is stored and protected should be a big concern for users and with these guidelines, car manufactures will have to make sure that personal information is managed appropriately. This includes providing the option of deleting personally identifiable data from the system. Emphasis is also made on making systems resilient to attacks as they should be able to withstand an attack and continue functioning. And this vehicle security should be made to last a lifetime so that an owner of an older vehicle is not left without protection just because he/she owns an older model.

“The system must be able to withstand receiving corrupt, invalid or malicious data or commands via its external and internal interfaces while remaining available for primary use. This includes sensor jamming or spoofing,” principle 8.1 states. While the risk of someone hacking a car are relatively low, the more common those vehicles get, the more attacks there will be. Thus, it is important that smart car manufacturers ensure they are providing top-level security for their customers.