Cyber Forum - Connected Transport/Autonomous vehicles

IoTSec Australia held the third of it's Cyber Forum series on December 2th themed on Connected Transport/Autonomous vehicles at BDO in Brisbane. IoTSec Australia Director Mike Younger introduced proceedings and the first keynote was delivered by Dr Miranda Blogg, Director of Co-operative Transport/Autonomous Vehicles at Department of Transport & Main Roads Queensland.

Dr Blogg gave an update on the departments strategy for Queensland's transport system "Creating a single integrated transport network accessible to everyone" in light of the movement to a connected transport infrastructure (Co-operative Intelligent Transport System or C-ITS) globally. Congestion, road and pedestrian safety were the key themes covered by Dr Blogg assisted by both infrastructure to vehicle and vehicle to vehicle intelligence. A C-ITS is currently being conducted with Ipswich City Council with feedback used to plan a larger pilot. Not surprisingly the global trends lead by the US and EU are being mirrored in Australia with both NSW and Queensland fairly advanced in strategy and planning with pilot's moving ahead.

Dr Andry Rakotonirainy, Deputy Director Centre for Accident Research & Road Safety at the Queensland University of Technology delivered the second keynote, focusing on the safety aspect of infrastructure to infrastructure and vehicle to infrastructure applications of C-ITS. Dr Rakotonirainy spoke on the security issues with autonomous vehicles but believes that currently, software failure presents more of a security challenge than hacking of vehicles.

Lastly IoTSec Australia Executive Director, Lani Refiti facilitated an expert panel consisting of Jamie Smith, Connected Transport Lead from Telstra, Stuart Allen-Keeling, Principal Security Specialist from Department of Transport & Main Roads Queensland and Dr Andry Rakotonirainy. The panel was more focused on the security aspects of autonomous vehicles with a lively discussion around current PKI based measures for infrastructure to vehicle security being deployed internally to secure CAN traffic to ECU. Possible applications using blockchain to ensure validity and authenticity of CAN traffic was encouraging but needed further testing and development.

Thank you to all our speakers and participants and in particular our sponsors BDO and Cisco Systems for contributing to a successful event.