Securing the Self-Driving Future: Cybersecurity Challenges and Solutions for Autonomous Vehicles

Autonomous vehicles are expected to revolutionize transportation in the coming decade, providing increased safety, efficiency, and accessibility. However, the complex sensor systems, onboard computers, and vehicle-to-infrastructure connectivity required for self-driving cars also introduce significant new cybersecurity risks. This paper provides an overview of autonomous vehicles' unique cybersecurity challenges and presents technical, governance, and policy solutions to secure the self-driving future. With millions of lines of software code and numerous electronic control units and data flows, autonomous vehicles have vastly expanded attack surfaces compared to traditional cars. New wireless interfaces enable attacks through channels like vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. A successful cyberattack could endanger passenger safety by interfering with critical vehicle controls or compromise driver privacy by accessing onboard sensor data. The complexity of autonomous vehicle systems also makes traditional security approaches like patching and anti-virus software difficult to implement. To address these concerns, automobile manufacturers and suppliers must secure communication channels, harden electronic control units through access controls and encryption, and implement intrusion detection systems and anomaly detection algorithms to identify attacks. Resilient vehicle designs that can maintain safe operation and degrade gracefully in the event of an attack are also needed. Data privacy must be assured through encryption and governance models for ethical data sharing. Furthermore, infrastructure investments, regulations, standards, and user education will be essential to enabling the safe adoption of autonomous vehicles across society. Proactive collaboration between automobile and technology companies, government agencies, academic researchers, and infrastructure providers is required to ensure the cybersecurity of autonomous transportation systems. With careful attention to vulnerability testing, redundancy, compartmentalization, and other best practices, the safety and reliability benefits of self-driving vehicles can be realized while also protecting vehicles from cyber threats. Additional research and development focused on autonomous vehicle cybersecurity will be vital as this transformative technology scales up over the next decade. By taking steps today to secure autonomous systems, we can build confidence in this technology and pave the way for its widespread adoption.