Security Challenges for Emerging Technology Trends in Transportation

With the increasingly central role technology is playing in our daily lives, the integration of technology with transport systems is a given — particularly as the move towards the development of ‘smart cities’ gathers momentum.

This move, as pointed out in Future Transport Technology Roadmap released by New South Wales (NSW) government, is facilitating rapid change in the transport industry, with more and more types of transport converging with technology in order to change the way people access and experience transport. An obvious example being the ability to hire private cars for point to point transportation using services such as Uber or Lyft.

While Information Technology is being used to improve customer service and more accurately map supply to demand for transport services, a range of new innovative technologies is also emerging which are transforming the transportation experience for individuals around the globe.

In this article, we cover a bit about the future of technology in urban transportation, and the potential security implications that flow from these developments.

What are these emerging innovative technologies?

With the increasingly high concentration of people living in urban areas and the demand for higher levels of service and information regarding transport services (such as real time updates on bus and train schedules), transportation needs now have much more complex solutions than simply building new roads or rail lines. Innovative technology-driven approaches are required to meet these demands.

In this context, the following technologies will play (and in some cases, already are playing) a critical role in facilitating more innovative approaches towards urban transportation.

• Autonomous (driverless) vehicle technologies: Driverless vehicle technology aims to offer safe, convenient and energy efficient transportation. These cars are equipped with Geographic Information System (GIS) technology (a software program that helps you to store and use information collected by GPS satellites) and new sensors to provide navigation systems.
• Connected vehicle technologies: Vehicles using this technology connect to and communicate with other cars and infrastructure in the nearby vicinity to make intelligent and real time decisions about optimal routes based on traffic flow and incidents.
• Shared transportation models: Services based on car sharing, ride sharing and bike sharing models are already highly popular and leverage the convergence of technologies like mobile communications, social media and geospatial analysis to cater to user demand in an elastic fashion and more effectively match demand with supply. It’s likely this approach will continue to become mainstream and evolve in the coming years.
• Customer interface technologies: Applications for providing user services like interactive social channels for communication with patrons and journey planning and easy payment methods are highly popular to cater to user mobility demands.

Security Implications of emerging innovative technologies

The transportation industry is in the midst of a phase where technologies are disrupting and changing the way people use public transport. With these changes inevitably come new considerations around security. These include:

• Privacy risks: While protecting the privacy of data is (or should be) a key concern for any business, the volumes of data held by transport organisations makes this risk of particular relevance to them. For example, security breaches of future transport systems could lead to cyber criminals being able to track passenger and vehicle location, access bank account details (as used to top up smart card balances) and monitor passenger travelling habits.
• Safety risks: While autonomous and connected vehicle technologies potentially reduce the risk of traffic incidents through removing driver error, as will all technologies, there are a range of security issues to consider. While the ‘confidentiality’ aspect of security relates largely to the privacy risk above, the ‘integrity’ and ‘availability’ aspects could have a material safety impact. If the data being transmitted to or from connected or autonomous cars could be tampered with or blocked, disruption or disaster could result.
• Supply chain risks: It is important to ensure all parties involved in supply chains for transport services effectively manage cyber security risks, as security vulnerabilities introduced anywhere along the supply chain can potentially lead to transport patrons being affected and placed at risk. Research[1] conducted by companies like Deloitte and PWC notes that most innovative technologies for the transport industry — primarily autonomous and connected cars — are currently developed in conjunction with or provided as a service by private vendors. As a result, a compromise in infrastructure, applications or platforms provided by third parties could result in the compromise of an entire transport service and affect the cost effectiveness of the industry. The 2016 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Analysis report[2] states that cost of data breaches caused by third party involvement has increased from 2015 to 2016.

Conclusion

It seems likely that technology-driven changes in the transport industry are only going to accelerate (excuse the pun). While these changes present the industry and the public with enormous opportunities for improved convenience, a major challenge that will remain is ensuring those changes are available without introducing a significantly higher level of security and privacy related risks for users of the system. This is likely to be one of the key emerging areas of focus for cyber security in the next decade, and will require a co-operative effort between governments, transport bodies, and supply chain partners to address.

1. https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/business-and-professional-services/articles/transport-in-the-digital-age.html
2. https://dupress.deloitte.com/dup-us-en/focus/future-of-mobility/transportation-technology.html
3. https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/infrastructure-and-capital-projects/solutions/transport.html
4. http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?htmlfid=SEL03094WWEN

Article by Lumina Remick, Security Advisor, Hivint