With the emergence of highly capable, low-cost, wirelessly controlled drones, bad actors can easily execute disruptive operations. Such incidents have created a need for drone defense systems that rapidly evolve with ever-increasing threat frequency and sophistication.

It's nearly impossible to look at technology news without seeing an article about drones. Whether detailing how Amazon wants to use drones to deliver packages or revealing amazing aerial video of drones following Olympic snowboarders, commercial drones are ubiquitous. Drone emergence has benefited many applications including sports broadcasting and wildlife preservation wilderness surveys. Offering powerful, intelligent software, drones are becoming less expensive and easier to use, with substantial operating range.

Written by Kirsten Koepsel, a lawyer and engineer whose work has focused on aviation cybersecurity, Supply Chain Vulnerabilities Impacting Commercial Aviation addresses the big question facing aircraft manufacturers today: keep the work in house or outsource it? The ongoing battle between cost cutting and supply-chain control is ever more visible as aircraft OEMs have full order books and tight delivery schedules.

Though likely to provide the OS of autonomy, BlackBerry also anticipates a larger shift to automobiles as software platforms.

At 2019's TU Automotive conference, Autonomous Vehicle Engineering spoke with two of the industry's most important software sages, BlackBerry's John Wall and Kaivan Karimi, both senior vice presidents and co-heads of Blackberry Technology Solutions. The duo's division includes BlackBerry's security services, the nigh ubiquitous QNX architecture along with products including Jarvis, Certicom and Paratek for the Waterloo, Ontario-based company. Sort of like chatting with the Obi-Wan and Yoda of secure-software architectures, the interview provided an animated back-and-forth between the two well-acquainted BlackBerry execs, discussing the emergence of the vehicle as its own software platform.

Biometric technology is deemed essential to ensuring AV driving safety and advancing the user experience-if privacy issues don't derail its deployment.

Research into potential automotive applications for biometrics-facial and retina scans or fingerprints-is increasing, despite rising concerns about privacy and data security, and outcries from civil liberties advocates. A growing number of OEMs, Tier 1s and startups are striving to add facial recognition capability to driver monitoring systems (DMS).

Although editor-in-chief Lindsay Brooke's cover story detailing the foundations of Israel's surging tech sector helps to explain the nation's expanding expertise in all things cyber-secure, much of this issue deals with security and privacy of another kind-the access we grant almost daily to all manner of digital “providers” of goods and services.