Panasonic and Trend Micro to jointly develop cyber security solution for connected cars

The partnership aims to achieve high security of autonomous and connected cars by developing solution to detect and prevent intrusions into electronic control units (ECUs) that control driving behaviour such as acceleration, steering and braking, as well as in-vehicle infotainment devices including automotive navigation systems and telematics devices.

The risks of hackers taking control of steering and braking systems in connected cars are real. New security vulnerabilities are discovered every day and they pose a risk for remote exploitation. It is therefore more important to not only implement security measures in each vehicle but also to analyse new attacks by constantly monitoring in-vehicle systems from the cloud and utilise the results to implement countermeasures against cyber-attacks to all vehicles.

This partnership will leverage Panasonic’s Control Area Network (CAN) intrusion detection and prevention technology and Trend Micro IoT Security. Panasonic’s technology will be deployed to detect any unauthorised commands sent to ECUs that control driving operation, while Trend Micro IoT Security will be implemented on IVI devices to detect attacks that seek to exploit vulnerabilities through the internet.

Through this partnership, events identified by both technologies will be collected and sent to an analysis platform in the cloud to detect and block suspicious traffic.

The overall development will enable the provision of solution including in-vehicle and cloud systems to prevent cyber-attacks against autonomous and connected cars. Panasonic and Trend Micro will be working jointly on the development and aim to launch commercially after 2020.

The architecture to be jointly developed are as follows:

· Electronic Control Unit: Computers that control actuators such as engine or steering

· In-vehicle infotainment: Entertainment and information applications available in vehicles

· Telematics: A service that sends/receives information to/from vehicles

· CAN intrusion detection and prevention technology: Technology that monitors CAN (Control Area Network), which allows communications between ECUs, to detect unauthorised commands and processes them as invalid commands

· Trend Micro IoT Security: A security solution for embedded devices connecting outside the vehicle with IP communications on general purpose operating systems such as Linux

· Malware: A general term used to refer to a variety of forms of hostile software or malicious code created to cause damage or harm including computer viruses