Adaptable Safety and Security in V2X Systems

With the advances in the areas of mobile computing and wireless communications, V2X systems have become a promising technology enabling deployment of applications providing road safety, traffic efficiency and infotainment. Due to their increasing popularity, V2X networks have become a major target for attackers, making them vulnerable to security threats and network conditions, and thus affecting the safety of passengers, vehicles and roads. Existing research in V2X does not effectively address the safety, security and performance limitation threats to connected vehicles, as a result of considering these aspects separately instead of jointly. In this work, we focus on the analysis of the tradeoffs between safety, security and performance of V2X systems and propose a dynamic adaptability approach considering all three aspects jointly based on application needs and context to achieve maximum safety on the roads using an Internet of vehicles. Experiments with a simple V2V highway scenario demonstrate that an adaptive safety/security approach is essential and V2X systems have great potential for providing low reaction times.