Government Mandates ‘Cybershield’ for Vehicles to Safeguard them Against Cyberattacks

• Published On: 28 November 2023
• 100 Views

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe World Forum for Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations (WP.29) is rolling out procedures to create vehicle management systems that can do risk assessment and combat cyber threats.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has now taken a precautionary measure to safeguard all new-age commercial and private vehicles against any kind of cyber attack. They have prepared a new draft to rectify the pre-existing automobile industry standards. Under this new mandate, all the OEMs will have to install new anti-cyber attack devices into their vehicles that are manufactured in India to shield their vehicles from any prospective cyber threats. Under the new set of standards, automobile manufacturers will be required to install a new cyber security management system which will be inclusive of protection against several cyber attacks on the vehicle’s autonomous driving functions, electronic control unit, connected functions, and infotainment systems. 

As per the reports of Economic Times, these will be applicable to all the M and N category vehicles, that include commercial and private vehicles. These new standards are all-set to be revealed in early December 2023. And these protective devices are equally crucial to be implemented in EV charging stations as well as they’re equally susceptible to cyber threats. 

Types of Possible Cyber Threats

Cyberattacks on automobiles and the infrastructure supporting charging them can involve spoofing messages, hacking backend servers, abusing data that the car collects by extracting or manipulating it, and tampering with the connectivity features of the car.

Read More: Tata Motors Launches its Fourth Registered Vehicle Scrapping Facility (RSVF) in Chandigarh

The recently proposed rule would update domestically produced automobiles to WP.29 standards, which mandate that OEMs provide multi-layer cybersecurity solutions to fend off cyberattacks. The World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations (WP.29) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe aims to develop vehicle management systems that are capable of risk assessment and vulnerability monitoring against such threats.

Additionally, in March 2023, Nitin Gadkari, the minister of road transport and highways, informed the Parliament that the government would take action against possible hacking and that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team had received reports regarding vulnerabilities in EV charging stations.