Headquartered in Texas, Futurex delivers solutions to a wide portfolio majorly dealing in data encryption solutions for financial institutions, retailers and IoT security in automobiles and so on.
Discussing the significance of IoT security of electric vehicles with Aishwarya, Ruchin Kumar, Vice President – South Asia, Futurex comments on the vulnerability of the EV charging ecosystem in India.
What are Futurex’s offerings and its unique services related to IoT Security in EV.
The IoT devices of an electric vehicle deal with things like vehicle diagnostics, battery charging, and driver assistance. They monitor and transmit data related to the EV’s safety and functionality. Since they handle sensitive data via wireless networks, they have to be secured against cyberthreats that would expose that data and compromise those networks. A great way to do this is with asymmetric encryption and key management; more specifically, with certificate authority (CA), digital signatures, and public key infrastructure (PKI).
Futurex’s encryption and key management solutions use asymmetric encryption as the backbone of a certificate authority, a digital entity that uses public-private key pairs to issue and manage digital certificates and digital signatures. By providing IoT devices with digitally signed certificates and well-managed encryption keys, it establishes a foundation upon which networked devices can safely communicate with and “trust” one another. This is all part of a PKI-based approach to secure IoT networks, strengthening them immensely.
Kindly tell us some of the key challenges Electric Mobility will face with cyberattacks and how can IoT counter it?
IoT networks are an attractive target for cyberattacks, and IoT-equipped electric vehicles are no exception. As mentioned, deploying a solution for digital certificates, signatures, and PKI is a great way to protect networked devices within an EV. However, external charging stations also represent a vector of attack. EV charging stations should use strong encryption to protect communications with EVs and other IoT devices. EV charging stations also benefit from many of the same authentication measures as other IoT devices. On top of this, the encryption keys used in the asymmetric encryption algorithms that secure all the transmitted data need to be managed effectively, necessitating a reliable enterprise key management solution to keep the while process orderly and secure.
Considering the vulnerability of the EV charging ecosystem, how do you think IoT will cater to payment and data analytics of the growing EV ecosystem.
As IoT devices become more sophisticated, so too will the cyberattacks against them. This is true across the board when it comes to tech and IT infrastructure. Organizations that deal with increasing volumes of data with increasingly sophisticated management structures will need to consider whether the cryptographic solutions they’ve deployed are sufficient to the task.
Mention Futurex’s opinion in terms of leveraging a robust security architecture in EV landscape.
Today, it’s not enough to deploy a cybersecurity solution and integrate it into your infrastructure; ideally, you want to deploy a solution that can accomplish numerous cryptographic use cases and manage them effectively all from a centralized, customizable platform. This is what Futurex brings to the market. With our cryptographic hardware and cloud solutions, organizations can deploy enterprise-grade cryptography that scales to the nth degree. The advantage here is a shared cryptographic resource pool distributed throughout an organization but managed in a centralized fashion. The benefits of this new approach are enormous.
Comparing India with the rest of the world, where do you think India stands currently at managing EV based cybersecurity measures?
Like the rest of the world, the Indian market is eager for EV and IoT solutions, and is searching for the most effective ways to deploy them in the most secure manner possible. Given the size and complexity of the market, India tends to carefully consider how to regulate new technology and what security measures are most advantageous to it. We look forward to seeing how things progress.