Exploring Vehicle Security Improvement Framework in the Safety Messaging System to Protect Against Hackers

Abstract

The transportation and automotive industry have seen the shifts and effects of innovation within the last decade, from the addition of critical messaging technologies, event response systems, to safety integration of each user initiated by safety messaging systems to almost all private utility vehicles to a public utility vehicle, all have seen either responsive or unresponsive layers of usability and functionality issues, together with the need for safety and protection of each users and riders. These assistive technologies are supposed to help drivers and operators in their daily driving routine, believed to be connected to a myriad of networked hardware and software, and arguably to be either be cost effective or safety limited. The study exploring vehicle security improvement framework in the safety messaging system to protect against hackers delivered responses from 6 subject matter experts within the public transit authority, cloud supply chain companies, and network providers that have invested greatly in vehicle ad hoc network technologies. Thematic analysis was chosen as a qualitative method design to extract themes from the critical answers through the semi-structured interview retrieved from general responses from the subject matter experts. The general findings were extracted from the major themes 1 through 5. The general findings are the following (1) Automotive Organizations and Transit Authority Leaders have to Manage Vehicle Cyber Risks Throughout the Vehicle Lifecycle, (2) Automotive Organization and Transit Authority Should Be Involved in Engineering a Secure Vehicle by Design, (3) Engineering Vendor Teams Should Detect and Respond to Major Incidents within the Vehicle Lifecycle.