The Cybersecurity Forum, which was hosted by IoT Insider’s sister publication Electronic Specifier at electronica 2024, featured thought-provoking insights and extensive expertise by the lineup of speakers, who discussed topics ranging from the Cyber Resilience Act to cybersecurity in the automotive landscape and harmonising security standards.
The lineup of speakers included:
- Preeti Ohri Khemani, Senior Director of Infineon Technologies and member of Connectivity Standards Alliance’s Europe Interest Group
- Stephane Di Vito, Senior Director and Lead Security Architect for Trusted Edge Solutions, Analog Devices
- Dr. Jörg Schepers, Vice President at Infineon’s Automotive Microcontroller Product Line
- Francesco Fiaschi, Cybersecurity Subject Matter Expert in Embed UK within Littelfuse
- Laurent Lagosanto, Technology Specialist, Avnet Silica
Kicking off the day, attendees to the Forum learned from Preeti Ohri Khemani about the release of its Product Security Certification Program, a single certification test the CSA has created which can qualify consumer IoT products to receive the certifications and labels needed to be sold around the world. Khemani stressed the importance of doing so, by providing a background to the growing number of cybersecurity attacks, citing the all-important Mirai botnet attack in 2016 which exploited IoT-enabled devices to issue distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
“Consumers can look at an IoT product which is certified and trust that,” said Khemani. “They can trust that because we are using the security requirements coming from all countries around the world and the manufacturers can be cost-effective in certification and compliance.”
Following Khemani was Stephane Di Vito from Analog Devices, who shared his insights into harnessing IoT-enabled machine learning algorithms to identify anomalies and intrusion detection in microcontrollers in the context of healthcare. Di Vito presented an overview of a proposed cybersecurity architecture and software stack, for microcontrollers, which incorporates intrusion detection and to enable the critical systems used in healthcare to detect and respond to cyber-attacks.
“The talk today is more about detecting events in your device, security problems that may arise,” stressed Di ito. “You may have your design well defined and everything is perfect, but if you have a bug in your software that you cannot detect, that’s a vulnerability.”
Dr. Jörg Schepers from Infineon Technologies followed on from that, as he explained the contemporary trends in automotive cybersecurity, referencing the pivotal role of standards such as ISO 21434, the impact of new electrical/electronic (EE) architectures, and the emerging influence of quantum computing.
“If you look ahead, what’s coming next are quantum computers … [which] will change the world significantly with respect to these cryptographic schemes,” said Dr. Schepers.
Franceso Fiaschi from Littelfuse was next to present, similarly on the topic of cybersecurity in the automotive landscape. He focused on the countermeasures that the automotive industry has taken to prevent cybersecurity risks from getting into the product life cycle, as well as providing some typical requests from the field of which Littelfuse has contributed to.
“Cyber security in the automotive [sector] has been a hot topic,”
Finally, finishing off the Cybersecurity Forum, Laurent Lagosanto from Avnet Silica shared to attendees Avnet Silica’s take on the upcoming Cyber Resilience Act, with regards to compliance, consequences of not complying, and how their products and services to comply with the CRA and build cyber resilient products.
“The CRA is trying to elevate … the level of cyber security in digital products that are being introduced in the EU market,” said Lagosanto, “So it’s not about making the best product, it’s not about making the perfect product. It’s about making a good enough product for the market.”
Electronic Specifier would like to thank the speakers for taking the time to share their insights, as well as the attendees who took the time to be part of the Forum.
If any attendees want to get in touch with the respective speakers and ask further questions, please reach out to: editor@electronicspecifier.com.
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