Achievement of important cybersecurity qualification in the automotive sector

Late last week, Ana­log Devices announced that its wBMS (Wire­less Bat­tery Man­age­ment Sys­tem) solu­tion has been cer­ti­fied to the high­est cyber­se­cu­ri­ty devel­op­ment and man­age­ment stan­dard. The ISO/SAE 21434 stan­dard is the new stan­dard for cyber­se­cu­ri­ty risk man­age­ment across the entire life­cy­cle of a vehi­cle from con­cept through prod­uct devel­op­ment, pro­duc­tion, oper­a­tion, and main­te­nance to retire­ment of elec­tri­cal and elec­tron­ic systems.

TÜV NORD Mobil­ität, act­ing as the asses­sor body for this qual­i­fi­ca­tion, con­firmed that ADI’s wBMS is the first auto­mo­tive sys­tem to receive ISO/SAE 21434 cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The assess­ment cer­ti­fies that ADI applied the nec­es­sary mea­sures dur­ing prod­uct devel­op­ment to meet CAL 4 requirements.

Since announc­ing the indus­try’s first wBMS sys­tem joint­ly with Gen­er­al Motors in 2020, ADI has intro­duced this tech­nol­o­gy into mass pro­duc­tion. The com­pa­ny offers vehi­cle man­u­fac­tur­ers an out-of-the-box solu­tion designed for safe­ty at all lev­els. Mov­ing bat­tery packs from wired to wire­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty enables automak­ers to scale their fleets across a wide range of vehi­cle class­es for mass pro­duc­tion. In doing so, wBMS tech­nol­o­gy pro­vides the mod­u­lar­i­ty, flex­i­bil­i­ty and scal­a­bil­i­ty need­ed to stream­line the devel­op­ment and assem­bly process using con­nec­tor­less bat­ter­ies. Giv­en the sup­port­ing role of wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tions, it is crit­i­cal to ensure that the sys­tem is trans­par­ent, secure and easy to deploy.

“We ver­i­fied that the wBMS meets the require­ments of the ISO/SAE 21434 stan­dard as part of a thor­ough assess­ment. Because ADI con­sid­ered the clas­si­fi­ca­tion con­di­tions for CAL 4 through­out prod­uct devel­op­ment, the mea­sures tak­en to ensure cyber secu­ri­ty met the most strin­gent spec­i­fi­ca­tions. This sys­tem cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is an impor­tant con­fi­dence-build­ing ele­ment in the entire elec­tri­fi­ca­tion ecosys­tem, rang­ing from ener­gy stor­age to OEMs to con­sumers, to pro­mote the adop­tion of elec­tric cars and con­tribute to the reduc­tion of harm­ful emissions.”

- Leif-Erik Schulte, Senior Vice President

A recent McK­in­sey report states that cyber­se­cu­ri­ty will become a new qual­i­ty dimen­sion for auto­mo­biles and will be a sine qua non for mar­ket access and type approval in the future. Clas­si­fi­ca­tion under the ISO/SAE 21434 stan­dard requires robust risk assess­ments to pre­emp­tive­ly iden­ti­fy any com­po­nents, APIs (appli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming inter­faces) or soft­ware func­tions that may be vul­ner­a­ble to pos­si­ble cyber attacks.”

“As per­son­al trans­porta­tion is a major con­trib­u­tor to glob­al warm­ing, accel­er­at­ing the adop­tion of elec­tric vehi­cles plays a crit­i­cal role in ensur­ing a sus­tain­able future,” said Roger Keen, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Bat­tery Man­age­ment Sys­tems. “Improv­ing the safe­ty and accu­ra­cy of elec­tric bat­ter­ies removes reser­va­tions from con­sumers’ pur­chas­ing con­sid­er­a­tions and facil­i­tates OEMs’ deci­sions to expand their elec­tric offer­ings. With this cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, ADI can pro­vide con­tin­u­ous vis­i­bil­i­ty and seam­less deliv­ery with­in the elec­tric bat­tery sup­ply chain to advance our vision of a green­er world. It also short­ens time-to-mar­ket for our cus­tomers, who can reduce their devel­op­ment time and cor­re­spond­ing cyber­se­cu­ri­ty infra­struc­ture investments.”