CYBER SECURITY IN HELSINKI CITY: FROM AUTHORITY TO ENABLER
An innovation company for the City of Helsinki, Forum Virium aims to build Helsinki into the most functional smart city in the world. This is done in collaboration with companies, the scientific community and residents. We want to future-proof the city and do this by providing a testbed for innovative solutions. In particular innovations that help reach the goal of carbon neutrality by 2035. Many of our approximately 40 projects relate to data, IoT, behaviour change and, notably, smart mobility. AUTONOMOUS TRANSPORT AS A CHANGEMAKER IN A SMART CITY
As a smart city, we are constantly on the lookout for mobility solutions to keep the city liveable and accessible. Part of Helsinki’s official strategy is to focus on demand-driven transport and to promote new mobility technologies. Autonomous transportation projects are an important part of the work of Forum Virium’s Smart Mobility team. Within this field, the focus is on drones and
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on self-driving shuttle buses, due to the contribution they are expected to make to a more efficient supply system, and more attractive public transport respectively. Of course also here, Helsinki city’s CO2 neutrality goals are a key driver of our work. CYBER SECURITY IN OUR PROJECTS: AUTONOMOUS SHUTTLE BUSES
Forum Virium has been involved in shared autonomous transport projects since 2015, by doing tests, together with companies, in increasingly challenging environments. Cyber security is at the heart of such systems: autonomous shuttles employ a combination of high-tech sensors and innovative algorithms to detect and respond to their surroundings, including radar, LIDAR, GPS and computer vision. For cities and transport authorities it is vital that they are as safe as possible, as they are used for public transport. In the ongoing large FABULOS project, consortia from Finland, Estonia and Norway pilot their turnkey prototype solutions in five European cities in 2020. The companies
carry the responsibility of providing a safe and secure system. In this Pre-Commercial Procurement, the so-called international Buyers Group (consisting of four cities, a Ministry and a public transport operator) have set certain functional requirements. The remote operations and the control room management of their robotbus fleets have to be rigorously tested and validated against cyber attacks. The system is to be subjected to a hacking attack by an external organisation with proper credentials, in order to verify that the system has sufficient protection both in the physical and virtual interfaces. In addition, we encourage the Consortia to set up a bug bounty system and to subject the system to a hackathon-type of event. Remote operation and fleet management systems must pass external validation for cyber safety by guidelines of National Cyber Security Authorities. CYBER SECURITY IN OUR PROJECTS: DRONES
Forum Virium Helsinki has already been a partner or closely linked to drone related
