Safety and security co-engineering and design

The research institute Austrian Institute of Technology AIT is actively involved in standardisation activities to foster safety and security co-engineering and to promote joint approaches.

The Dependable Systems Engineering group at AIT has a long-standing history in addressing the interdependencies of safety, security and reliability. Besides conducting leading research, the group is developing new methods and tools to guarantee safety and security of systems. In addition, it’s members are also helping to shape future industry standards by contributing to, for example, ISO TC22 (Automotive), ISO TC299 (Robotics), IEC TC56 (Dependability), IEC TC62 (Medical), IEC TC65 (Industrial Control), and AIOTI WG03 (M2M). The group also makes this accumulated experience and expertise available through trainings and consulting.

Traditionally, safety and security were treated as separate issues. However, this view does not hold anymore as modern systems are largely interconnected: today, safety cannot be guaranteed without taking security into account, and security measures can be influenced by safety requirements.

Dependability means availability, reliability, safety, integrity, maintainability, and security. It is a key aspect in many application domains. For instance, robot-human interactions increasingly gain importance in the Industry 4.0 setting. Self-driving cars will take autonomous decisions based on sensor data and communication with other vehicles and infrastructure. Strongly interconnected IoT-services and devices are expected to work reliably, and be safe and secure at the same time. In domains like these, safety, security and privacy overlap and any malfunction or weakness can result in loss of human lives or expensive damage and loss of reputation. Ensuring the dependability of these complex systems therefore is a precondition for the public to be trusting and accepting them.

AIT is offering services in:

• safety & security co-engineering
• modelling of cyber-threats
• automated test case generation
• runtime verification
• machine code analysis
• training & consulting