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.

In-depth analysis of malware provides strategy to defend against future attacks.

Ransomware is malware that obstructs a user from accessing digital assets through various mechanisms. These assets are held hostage and inaccessible until the user pays a ransom. In most cases, this is accomplished using encryption where, once the malicious program executes, it will target and encrypt certain files and will release the decryption key at the time of payment. Some ransomware instances target only certain common user-generated files such as media and documents. In this case, system files and others required for the operating system to function correctly (user authentication, process execution, etc.) are unaffected. Others encrypt much more and seek to lock out entire systems.

This SAE Recommended Practice establishes a uniform practice for protecting vehicle components from "unauthorized" access through a vehicle data link connector (DLC). The document defines a security system for motor vehicle and tool manufacturers. It will provide flexibility to tailor systems to the security needs of the vehicle manufacturer. The vehicle modules addressed are those that are capable of having solid state memory contents accessed or altered through the data link connector. Improper memory content alteration could potentially damage the electronics or other vehicle modules; risk the vehicle compliance to government legislated requirements; or risk the vehicle manufacturer's security interests. This document does not imply that other security measures are not required nor possible.

Media & entertainment offers important learnings on data retention, management, scalability and security.

At first glance, autonomous vehicles would seem to have little in common with the Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry, beyond action-movie car chases and in-vehicle entertainment screens.