A pilot project in the field of automotive cybersecurity will be held in Russia

JSC GLONASS, together with FSUE NAMI and Gamma subordinate to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, with the support of the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Transport, are preparing a pilot project in the field of autocyberbesis. This was announced on November 27 at a round table of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, IT and Communications by the general director of GLONASS JSC Alexei Raikevich.

According to him, the start of the "pilot" is scheduled for mid-January 2025. Infrastructure is already ready for it.

As part of the "pilot," we want to highlight the vulnerabilities of modern cars and show modern mechanisms that, in general, have already been tested and demonstrated their effectiveness in our internal test modes of detecting and combating cyber threats, - explained Alexey Raikevich.

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Starting in January, such a "pilot" will be prepared within three months - we are talking about connecting vehicles, and the next four months will be a demonstration of the work of the so-called VSOC (Vehicle Security Operations Center), a center for detecting, preventing and eliminating the consequences of computer attacks on vehicles.

A modern car is essentially a computer on wheels that requires protection from cyber threats, especially in the context of the emergence of highly automated and unmanned vehicles. In addition, many imported vehicles enter the Russian market, where there is a telematic unit in which the profile of the communication network of a foreign operator is installed.

From here arises the problem of uncontrolled cross-border data transmission: "What and in what volume is incomprehensible." Obviously, today it is quite easy to transmit the geoposition of vehicles, and cars are also equipped with video cameras. All this carries threats to information security, Alexey Raikevich explained the prerequisites for the pilot project.

In parallel with the pilot project of GLONASS JSC with these ministries, it plans to work out the regulatory framework in this area.

According to TAdviser, Kaspersky Lab is also involved in the project: the company participates in a working group to discuss this project. However, Kaspersky Lab does not comment on this topic at the moment. However, earlier, in mid-2023, NAMI reported that, together with GLONASS JSC and Kaspersky Lab, it was developing a cloud platform for information security of vehicles connected to the geo-positioning system.

The implementation of the platform at that time involved the launch of the state VSOC, which would allow prompt notification of attacks, provide information to respond to incidents on the scale of organizations, automakers and the country as a whole. And as part of VSOC, it was planned to use the SIEM solution from Kaspersky Lab.

Deputy Minister of Industry Vasily Shpak, who was present at the round table in the State Duma on November 27, also noted the increased threats associated with the computerization of vehicles. For example, now vehicles collect large amounts of data, but it is not always clear what happens to this data, wherever they leak, where they are stored, how they are processed, and what exactly foreign "colleagues" can collect: "And then we wonder what detailed maps with photos in 3D can be scrolled to Google or somewhere else."