3 Questions for Professor Franz Korf
In the research project “SecVI: Security for Vehicular Information,” teams from science and development are working closely together. automotion spoke with project coordinator Professor Franz Korf, who teaches at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Applied Sciences (HAW) in Hamburg.
For SecVi project coordinator Professor Franz Korf from HAW in Hamburg, it is clear that the increasing degree of vehicle connectivity will require multi-level security solutions in the future.
automotion: Professor Korf, what requirements do cyber security systems have to meet today?
Many functions in the vehicle – including safety-critical ones – are based on software. This means there is also a potential risk of cyber attacks.
«To make matters worse, in the future attacks via the network could be directed not only against individual cars, but also against entire vehicle fleets.»
— project coordinator for "Security for Vehicular Information"
Cyber security systems, which consist of several interlocking subsystems, must therefore be able to detect attacks, evaluate them and initiate countermeasures as connectivity advances.
automotion: How do projects benefit when they are implemented in a partnership?
In the SecVI project, different IT security technologies intertwine, so that all project partners benefit from their complementary expertise. With IAV, easycore GmbH and HAW Hamburg with two research groups, three partners are coming together, each bringing a different background to the project. IAV has the necessary technological expertise to holistically map the security requirements in accordance with the UNECE specifications.
automotion: Why did you jointly decide on a three-stage approach?
In the SecVI project, we are integrating two different technologies into the Automotive Cyber Defense Center (ACDC): ECU (Electronic Control Unit) protection through firewall-based technologies and an SDN-based (Software-Defined Networking) attack-resistant network architecture. Since there is no one excellent security technology that can block all attacks, several technologies must mesh to protect a vehicle fleet. And that’s exactly what we’re doing in the SecVI project.
The article was published in automotion 01/2021, the automotive engineering magazine of IAV. Here you can order the automotion free of charge.
