An Adaptable Security by Design Approach for Ensuring a Secured Remote Monitoring Teleoperation (RMTO) of an Autonomous Vehicle

Remote Monitoring and Teleoperation (RMTO) of Autonomous Vehicles (AV) is advancing rapidly in the industry. Researchers and industrial partners explore the role RMTO plays in helping AV navigate complicated situations, among many others. At the heart of this lies the problem of potential pathways and attack vectors or threat surfaces by which a malicious attack can be carried out on an RMTO and an AV. The separation of cybersecurity considerations in RMTO is barely considered, as so far, most available research and activities are mainly focused on AV. The main focus of this paper is addressing RMTO cybersecurity utilising an adaptable security-by-design approach, although security-by-design is still in the infant state within automotive cybersecurity. An adaptable security-by-design approach for RMTO covers Security Engineering Life-cycle, Logical Security Layered Concept, and Security Architecture. Based on the international automotive cybersecurity standards - ISO/SAE 21434, a Threat Analysis and Risk Assessment (TARA) with a formalisation of the highest level of threats identified from the TARA of the RMTO system is carried out, with corresponding mitigation actions as per UNECE WP29. The adaptable security-by-design approach has been then applied to a prototype RMTO system developed by an industrial partner. Finally, penetration testing has been carried out where the results verify the capability of the adoptable security-by-design to reinforce the security of the RMTO systems against some of the identified risks and threats.