The KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence (CoE) at the University of Cyprus is participating in an Innovation Action project funded by the EU under the Horizon 2020 programme. The project is titled “CARAMEL” and brings together 15 organizations from 8 European countries with complementary expertise and skills. It addresses the cybersecurity challenge of the next generation mobility, contributing to the long-term vision of safer roads with zero fatality.
More specifically, the damaging effects of cyberattacks to an industry like the Cooperative Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) can be tremendous. One can mention for example the damage in the reputation of vehicle manufacturers; the increased denial of customers to adopt CCAM; the loss of working hours (having direct impact on the European GDP); material damages; increased environmental pollution due e.g., to traffic jams, and ultimately, the great danger for human lives, either they are drivers, passengers or pedestrians.
CARAMEL’s goal is to proactively address modern vehicle cybersecurity challenges by applying advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) techniques and to continuously seek methods to mitigate associated safety risks.
In order to address cybersecurity considerations for the already here autonomous and connected vehicles, well-established methodologies coming from the ICT sector will be adopted, allowing to assess vulnerabilities and potential cyberattack impacts. Although past initiatives and cybersecurity projects related to the automotive industry have reached to security assurance frameworks for networked vehicles, several newly introduced technological dimensions like 5G, autopilots, and smart charging of Electric Vehicles (EVs) introduce cybersecurity gaps, not addressed satisfactorily yet. Considering the entire supply chain of automotive operations, CARAMEL targets to reach commercial anti-hacking Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS) products for the European automotive cybersecurity and to demonstrate their value through extensive attack scenarios.
The project’s outcomes will be the enhanced protection against novel threats, the advanced technologies and services to manage complex cyber-attacks and to reduce the impact of data breaches, and robust, transversal and scalable ICT infrastructures resilient to cyber-attacks that can underpin relevant domain-specific ICT systems (e.g., for energy) providing them with sustainable cybersecurity, digital privacy and accountability.
The project’s partnership consists of i2CAT (Project Coordinator), Ficosa and Atos from Spain; AVL from Austria; the KIOS CoE at the University of Cyprus, 8Bells and Sidroco from Cyprus; Altran, Panasonic Automotive and T-Systems from Germany; The University of Patras from Greece; GreenFlux and Cyberlens from the Netherlands; Ubiwhere from Portugal and 0 Infinity from the UK.
Project’s website: https://www.h2020caramel.eu/
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 833611
