Today, we’re excited to announce that BlackBerry has joined the Automotive Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Auto-ISAC), the world’s premier automotive cybersecurity information sharing community dedicated to preventing cyber threats to current and future connected vehicles.
Now more than ever before, cybersecurity is top of mind for automakers as their cars become more connected to the outside world. Today’s vehicles are computers on wheels—with over 100 million lines of software per car. The technology in them protects us, entertains us, and in many ways is beginning to drive us – think ADAS features like collision avoidance, blind spot monitoring and lane departure warning systems that are fast becoming de rigueur among automakers with one eye on the future.
However in the race for self-driving cars, building consumer trust when it comes to safety is just as important as building the technology. For the general public to accept and ultimately adopt autonomous vehicles en masse, there needs to be trust in the technologies, trust in their advantages and of course, trust that the companies building them (and profiting off of them) will act responsibly. It is a moral imperative for those of us within the industry that are advancing this fast approaching future to make sure it is both safe and secure.
The Auto-ISAC provides us with an opportunity to do so by sharing information with our partners, customers, and competitors that will ultimately make us all safer. The membership organization operates as a central hub to share and analyze intelligence about emerging cybersecurity risks. Its secure intelligence sharing portal allows members to anonymously submit and receive information that helps them more effectively respond to cyber threats.
By joining, we’re among good company. The Auto-ISAC has global representation with its membership representing more than 99 percent of the light-duty vehicles on the road in North America. Members also include heavy-duty vehicles, commercial fleets and carriers and suppliers.
A key action by the Auto-ISAC is the publishing of the Automotive Cybersecurity Best Practices Guides that cover organizational and technical aspects of vehicle cybersecurity. Currently, three of the guides are available to the public: incident response, governance and collaboration and engagement with appropriate third parties. Additional guides are forthcoming: security-by-design, risk management, threat detection and protection, and training and awareness.
We plan to engage at several levels with the organization and our work has already begun. We’re reviewing and sharing vulnerabilities that we and our fellow partner members have discovered. We’re actively working on the development of more Best Practices Guides that the industry can leverage to enhance the security, trustworthiness, and ultimately the safety of connected vehicles. And we’re helping to build the path for the future of the organization to ensure it’s able to keep pace with the rapid changes that are reshaping our transport and mobility patterns.
We see the future of transportation as an exciting one because of the tremendous potential it offers from enhanced vehicle and pedestrian safety to reduced traffic congestion and carbon emissions and all of the accompanying economic benefits that will accrue with the establishment of Smart Cities and Intelligent Transportation Systems.
At the end of the day, everyone working in this exciting field has a responsibility to ensure that connected and autonomous vehicles ultimately achieve safer-than-human-level performance and the Auto-ISAC is a fantastic organization to help us work towards that goal.
Watch this space for more updates on our work with the Auto-ISAC or learn more about the organization here – https://www.automotiveisac.com.
