Safety and security in connected cars

Abstract

The question, whether automotive ECUs (electronic control units) can easily be integrated into the Internet of Things (IoT) will serve as the starting point of this paper. It will lead us directly to the concepts of safety and security and their various aspects in the context of automotive software development. Thereafter, I will summarize the state of the art, especially the tremendous standardization efforts in the field over the past decade. Subsequently, I will show constructive measures which may improve safety and security of software of automotive ECUs. In particular, I will consider technologies like microkernel and virtualization and their application in COQOS, an operating system of the German company OpenSyrnergy that enables virtualization for automotive ECUs. At the end of the paper, I would like to emphasize the benefits of COQOS on the basis of a practical example.