The digital future of the automotive industry

The digital future of the automotive industry
The digital future of the automotive industry  

Autonomous driving, cloud-based services and other services: The digital transformation in the automotive industry is in full swing and is currently being accelerated by disruptive technologies and new market players. Klaus Hardy Mühleck, IT industry pioneer and former CIO of DaimlerChrysler and Volkswagen AG, explains, jointly with Jochen Schönweiß from the cybersecurity company secunet, where we stand in the transformation process and what this means for IT security.

In recent years, vehicles including the entire transport infrastructure have developed into a highly networked system with countless digital interfaces. The car no longer functions as a product of a single manufacturer and its technical suppliers, but must also involve the stakeholders of the digital value chain, as Klaus Hardy Mühleck explains: "There has always been exchange in the industry, especially in the classical disciplines. However, the big change is now taking place with the integration of the digital ecosystem inside and around the vehicle. Cloud-based online services, services such as charging management for electric vehicles, parking guidance systems, (partially) autonomous driving and emergency assistance are practically the norm these days."

The basis for this is the AI-assisted processing and analysis of sensor data from the car and the environment, which is ultimately made available for vehicle control. Whereas a visit to the workshop used to be necessary for the readout, the vehicle data is nowadays increasingly transmitted via an online telematics interface. "However, this also increases the potential attack surface with regard to unauthorised data access", explains Jochen Schönweiß from secunet, "IT security is a top priority in this field and will become even more important in the future when Car2Car communication enables autonomous driving. This requires a holistic security architecture in which public key infrastructures (PKI) play a central role. „Likewise, Mühleck sees IT security as the central criterion that will determine the success of future vehicle generations: "Networking and data use in complex automotive architectures require uncompromising hardware and software security. This begins in the vehicle with embedded security components, for example in the bus networks that are readily available today, and extends to Car2X communication in mobile ad hoc networks (MANets) with security procedures such as Secure Dynamic Source Routing (SDSR) to data storage and AI in the cloud."

In addition to safety inside and around the vehicle, there is the digitisation of supply chains – especially in an industry in which the proportion of suppliers is beyond 70 percent. "To ensure smooth processes and successful planning, cybersecurity must be enforced along the entire production chains. That's because IT security is a global issue that only works as a whole", says Schönweiß. For vehicle developers, looking at the bigger picture of digital innovations and investing in IT security have long since become an essential part of their work. "At the end of the day, it's about being there and maintaining your market share and even contributing to the development of these markets. The former stepchild IT thus becomes a guarantor of success and determines the welfare of the industry," Mühleck sums up.

Interested parties can find out more about this topic in the expert contributions from the secunet workshop "Automotive cybersecurity – the future requirements for networked systems". These are available for free download: https://www.secunet.com/workshop-industrial-security-online-2022/3.