CYBER SECURITY IN SMART CITIES

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 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 projects like New Solutions in City Logistics or Aviapolis Liikennelabra during the last couple of years. Nevertheless, the first only drone focused project Carbon neutral drone solutions in Southern Finland started last September at Forum Virium Helsinki and one month later it was presented in the 1st drone congress in Finland organised by Cyberwatch Finland. The main objective of the project is to pilot and promote carbon neutral and emissions-free drone services for the purposes of logistics, remote security, and environmental control, and develop them into new forms of business to replace combustion engine forms of mobility and transport.

Just as with self-driving shuttle buses, the key elements of such services are built firmly around security aspects. Especially the autonomous and BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) flights conducted in a reserved airspace need to be secured against any kind of cyber risks so that the drone is under control during the whole flight and can be taken down by the control centre at any moment without causing any damage to people or surroundings. Nevertheless, the most serious risk would be a case where a hacker gets into the drone’s navigation system and takes control of it. Firstly, it could cause serious damage if crashed purposely to a crowd or building, and secondly, the content it carries could fall into the wrong hands. According to the content, that could be also data, the consequences could be more or less serious.

Other cybersecurity issues within the civil drone industry are for example geofencing and U-space. Geofencing is supposed to prevent drones from flying in forbidden no-drone zones but it seems not to be 100% reliable. The so-called U-space airspace that is currently under development consists of a set of digital services and is therefore also highly related to security issues. Once in use, the U-space will make possible autonomous drones to fly in the same low altitude airspace together with other aircraft as it will enable the sharing of flight management information between different users. In order to be reliable it needs to answer to the highest cyber security requirements.

Knowledge-building for safe and smart cities

For cities, being public authorities, it is always “safety first” for innovations. Especially ones that involve AI, algorithms and sensors. Companies that we work with need to prove that operations in our city, among our residents, are secure. Setting these standards is a difficult task, not least because of the lack of knowledge among many city stakeholders on topics such as cyber security in (autonomous) mobility. Therefore, close cooperation with companies and research institutes is crucial. Information exchange, increasing our expertise and building an ecosystem of knowledgeable partners in the field of cyber security in autonomous mobility is what we strive to do.

Testing and piloting are the best way of doing this and are therefore at the heart of the work of Forum Virium Helsinki.

text: HEIDI HEINONEN Forum Virium Helsinki, Smart Mobility Team

text: RENSKE MARTIJNSE-HARTIKKA Forum Virium Helsinki, Smart Mobility Team

FABULOS is a three year Pre-Commercial Procurement project (2018 - 2020) funded by Horizon 2020

Carbon neutral drone solutions in Southern Finland is funded by the European regional development fund and will go on until the end of 2021.