Cybersecurity in Transport Systems

The role of data and information and communication technology (ICT) is growing in all areas of transport, with autonomous vehicles among the most advanced examples. This opens up opportunities for malevolent interference, such as remote-control of vehicles for criminal or terrorist purposes or interruption of increasingly interconnected transport systems. It is therefore imperative that cybersecurity is upgraded and designed into new systems.
Focusing on the management of security and the principles of security technologies in the context of transport systems, this book equips readers with an understanding of what management actions need to be taken and the sort of technologies available to defend against cyberattacks. To improve their decision making, managers need to understand how security practices and technologies work, so the book spans a range of areas: from regulations to security management, to the principles of selected technologies.
Cybersecurity in Transport Systems provides insights across multiple modes of transport, including insight from seasoned practitioners. It also addresses advances and themes in current research and the future outlook as we move to increasing digital transformation.
The book is aimed at managers in the transport sector but is widely applicable to other sectors, especially those that are safety critical. Much of the book will be useful to students considering careers in industries that rely on information technology, and to researchers in academia and industry.
- Book DOI: 10.1049/PBTR015E
- Chapter DOI: 10.1049/PBTR015E
- ISBN: 9781785616686
- e-ISBN: 9781785616693
- Page count: 453
- Format: PDF
-
Front Matter
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
(1)
-
1 Modernisation in transport
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
1
–38
(38)
This chapter has considered the cross-sector issues with modernisation. The key themes have been the integration of operational and information technologies, which work towards improved efficiency but introduce new and common vulnerabilities. The IoT and the adoption of AI are newer challenges, and it may be some time to come before AI is approved for safety significant applications. Indeed, safety has generally slowed down the adoption of new technologies, as increasingly complex systems may have emergent properties that do not immediately manifest as safety issues. Hence, where passenger lives are at stake, the transport sector may continue to be slow to adopt the latest technology.
This chapter has also explored technologies that are common across the transport sector, most noticeably GNSS (e.g. GPS and Galileo). The reliance on satellite positioning and timing in so many applications means that protection of the system and its 'signals in space' is vital. This is why older technology such as inertial navigation has been retained in aircraft, and ship navigators must retain their skills in celestial navigation. Systems such as Passenger Information Display Systems are also common across the transport sector, in airports, seaports, and railway and bus stations.
The examples of modernisation specific to different transport modes also show a high degree of commonality, two examples being ADS-B in aviation and AIS in maritime. Given that many of the technology principles are similar, we should be mindful of the propensity for attackers to copy and adapt attack methods from one transport mode to another.
-
2 Navigating the transport system security landscape: threats, responses and governance
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
39
–110
(72)
This chapter attempts to navigate the transport security landscape by examining its evolution in terms of assets and services, the threats to which transport systems are exposed, and the means of responding to these challenges.
Transport systems are evolving rapidly as a result of digitalisation, with new subsystems being incorporated into legacy systems to improve performance, reduce costs, and deliver new services. One component of these developments is the potential introduction of new vulnerabilities into the transport system, which may be exploited by malicious actors, and may result in undesirable impacts on systems and the services that they provide.
In order to illustrate the importance of addressing cyber security in several transport modes, a variety of historical cyber-security incidents are presented. These show the exploitation of a broad variety of system vulnerabilities by different types of attackers and explain the main issues associated with the incidents.
The chapter then goes on to address how to respond to the challenge of ensuring that transport systems are cyber-resilient, describing the need for a systematic, system-wide, holistic approach, which promotes security-by-design throughout the system life cycle. Transport stakeholders should converge towards a common level of security, ensure that information is shared securely between them, and seek to develop a high level of security culture.
The role of national, regional, and global regulations, standards and guidance material is then addressed. The majority of regulations are mode-specific, but some apply across all transport modes and encompass other industry sectors, adding complexity to the regulatory environment. The standards and guidance material applied also tend to be mode-specific, and tailored standards are being developed which meet the individual requirements of each mode. This section provides information on how the material has evolved and highlights the main developments for each mode. As such, it may be a useful reference for those seeking insights in this area.
The chapter concludes with a summary of the issues addressed.
-
3 Introduction to risk management
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
111
–151
(41)
Most readers will be familiar with project, programme or enterprise risk management. Our aim in the chapter is to promote a general understanding of risk in the context of cybersecurity, and how it is approached practically. We draw on ISO 27005 [1] but are generally not prescriptive; we reference several standards and frameworks available to organisations looking to develop a mature approach to cyber risk. A large part of the chapter is a walk-through of the risk management process, where we address the management of risks from remote keyless systems (RKS) in cars, focusing on the main steps and some of the issues that arise. We also analyse risks both quantitatively and qualitatively to highlight the relative merits of the approaches.
-
4 Security management systems
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
153
–179
(27)
The preceding chapter on risk management provides a good argument for considering security as 'good management practice'. There is no shortage of slogans such as 'built-in security' or 'security is as weak as its weakest link' to highlight the holistic nature of security thinking. Nonetheless, organisations reportedly struggle to address security appropriately.
This book and, in particular, this chapter, is rooted in security management. If there is one message from this book about security from a management perspective, it is that today's security leadership has evolved to taking a more holistic approach to security. Security is no longer an exclusive matter of avoiding and banning 'bad people and bad things' in the physical domain. Accordingly, security is no longer just a question of technical security measures it involves the whole organisation and includes every member of staff.
-
5 Security and safety
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
181
–203
(23)
There has been a historic partition between safety and security risk management, which could be seen as an oversimplification as the two are becoming increasingly blurred. This is particularly the case with the increased use of automation and autonomous systems in the transportation sector. Furthermore, there is a misguided assumption that by performing a safety risk assessment, security risk is also addressed.
The distinction between accidental and deliberate causes of an unwanted event is becoming harder to distinguish, especially when nation state offensive teams or cybercriminals have developed cyberweapons that mimic more routine software or hardware bugs.
The premise of this chapter is that security and safety are inextricably linked, and organisations with safety risk management practices should begin to introduce more formalised security risk management. A key question is how these approaches to risk management differ and whether, and how, they might be integrated.
In this chapter, we address this issue, first by describing safety risk management and 'safety cases', which are used for the introduction of new systems or significant system changes and to existing operational systems. We then describe an approach to a 'security case'. The remainder of the chapter considers the extent to which safety and security can be brought together and ways of doing this.
The examples, processes and statements in this chapter are drawn from the aviation industry. Similar organisational structure and processes are defined for other transport sectors, such as the International Maritime Organisation or the European Railways Agency.
-
6 Prevention security controls
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
205
–251
(47)
The preceding chapters have focused on the context and management frameworks for decision-making in cyber security, for example, the regulatory requirements, how to assess risks, how to manage security and approaches to managing safety and security. In this chapter we take a look at the types of technical controls used to prevent attacks to give readers an understanding of how they work. While we have focused on technical controls, this is not to dismiss the importance of administrative controls. The controls discussed are some of the UK National Cyber Security Centre's (NCSC) 'Cyber Essentials' controls: firewalls, anti-malware, patch management and passwords. We also discuss some of the underlying security methods of encryption, Internet security and email security.
-
7 Threat identification, monitoring and detection
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
253
–299
(47)
The preceding chapter focused on pre-event or 'preventative' controls, which reduce the likelihood of an attack being successful. In this chapter, we delve into a further category of control, 'detection', which assists in the discovery of both attempted and successful cyberattacks. Furthermore, we explore how threat intelligence and threat data can be used to model, understand, detect and address malicious or anomalous behaviour within networks.
This chapter aims to help readers understand how attacks are identified and the methods and models that security teams use to monitor systems, detect attacks and inhibit them. As in the previous chapter, we do not cover an exhaustive set of controls or methodologies, and those discussed are also not specific to the transport sector. By gaining an understanding of how they work in general, we hope to broaden knowledge and understanding around how detection controls can aid in securing systems.
This chapter does not endeavour to provide guidance on configuration or implementation of such detection tools, technologies, or methodologies - but rather aims to equip the reader with an overarching understanding of the concepts discussed and explore how they can be used to augment defensive needs. The chapter draws on examples to enhance the descriptions; however, these should not be considered exhaustive or definitive use cases. Implementation and utilisation of such tools require expertise and methodologies can be widely nuanced; the use of such depend heavily on a wide array of criteria, including an organisations' risk appetite as well as their unique environment or network topology.
The underlying assumption for this work is that attacks can no longer be stopped at the perimeter of a system or organisation, so to detect attacks and defend against them, we need to understand the attacker's motives, objectives and methods. This has led to informing strategies and technologies that deter and defend against attacks, as well as the continued development of security knowledge, expertise, technologies and services with an aim to defend networks and ecosystems.
-
8 Technical response and correction
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
301
–336
(36)
The preceding chapters focused on information security controls to prevent and detect attacks. For many years, most security teams focused exclusively on prevention and detection to mitigate the risk of a successful attack, believing that major incidents were avoidable. As the number of organisations experiencing major incidents increased, particularly in the last decade, the security industry realised (a) that breaches were no longer avoidable but inevitable and (b) that although incidents will occur, the risk of major disruptions to the business can be managed by executing an effective incident response. In the transport sector, there is extensive experience of failure and even the most comprehensively risk-reduced operations can lead to severe impacts if the fallout is not managed. For example, a short-term outage in air traffic control (ATC) systems can cause days of disruption should there be no incident management. Hence, the aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the fundamental components required to execute a successful incident response.
-
9 Autonomous vehicles - cybersecurity and privacy challenges and opportunities
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
337
–375
(39)
With technical innovation accelerating through the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is clearly feasible that truly autonomous vehicles without human intervention will be realised in this generation. It has been shown that all fields related to autonomous vehicles, including cybersecurity and privacy, are constantly evolving, with frequent technical breakthroughs. However, cybersecurity and privacy will be critical challenges for the success of implementing autonomous vehicles. This chapter provides an overview of the current state of the art on the cybersecurity and privacy aspects of autonomous vehicles and focuses on crucial concepts and principles in cybersecurity and privacy of autonomous vehicles rather than the current technical status of each research strand. It is expected that this chapter could provide a high-level resource, through which, readers can understand the challenges and the landscape of cybersecurity and privacy of autonomous vehicles in the incredibly connected and technology-orientated world. The chapter also addresses the economics of autonomous vehicle security - a critical element in the cybersecurity domain, as well as the infrastructure investments for improving the security and privacy of autonomous vehicles. Finally, a case study of maritime vehicles further demonstrates the critical challenges of cybersecurity and privacy, as well as the need of technology advance for the safety of autonomous vehicle in maritime, which might be threatened by the cyberattacks or cybercrimes.
-
10 Continued transport modernisation and the implications for security
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
377
–402
(26)
Modern transport systems, as illustrated in the previous chapters, are changing in several ways that are impacting their cybersecurity profile, and in a world where cybersecurity threats are becoming ever more sophisticated and targeted. New transportation systems on the ground, in the air, in water and even in space are being researched and engineered, integrated and operated, and these are generating new types of data and will be operated with innovative means of control. Moreover, some high profile incidents illustrating national exposure to new risks have raised the urgency to the most senior levels of government, evidenced by US President Biden's 100-day review of the US electric supply chains, equipment and programmable components. The development of electrical-based transportation has resulted in the re-evaluation of supply networks to encompass new dependencies, such as on electric instead of hydrocarbon resources. Some key themes of this evolution are outlined below, along with some implications for cybersecurity.
-
Appendix 1: Assuring the cybersecurity of rail systems
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
403
–411
(9)
In this appendix to Chapter 1, we present a much more detailed exploration of the challenges of cyber security to operational transport systems, in this case rail systems.
-
Back Matter
- + Show details - Hide details
-
p.
(1)
Related content
