Gap analysis of ISO/SAE 21434 – Improving the automotive cybersecurity engineering life cycle

Paper in proceeding, 2023

Due to the ongoing legislative shift towards mandated
cybersecurity for road vehicles, the automotive cybersecurity
engineering standard ISO/SAE 21434 is seeing fast
adoption throughout the industry. Early efforts are focusing on
threat analysis and risk assessment (TARA) in the concept and
development phases, exposing the challenge of managing TARA
results coherently throughout the supply chain and life cycle.
While the industry focuses on TARA, other aspects such as
vulnerability or incident handling are receiving less attention.
However, the increasing threat landscape makes these processes
increasingly important, posing another industry challenge.
In order to better address these two challenges, we analyze
the cybersecurity engineering framework of ISO/SAE 21434
for gaps or deficiencies regarding TARA management and
vulnerability and incident handling, as well as similar processes
for incident handling in IT security. The result is a proposal
for modifications and augmentations of the ISO/SAE 21434
cybersecurity engineering framework. In particular, we propose
a TARA management process to facilitate the coordination and
information exchange between different systems and life cycle
phases, and we propose improvements to the vulnerability and
incident handling processes in ISO/SAE 21434 so that they are
more aligned with established standards. This amounts to 13
new terminology definitions, 4 new process steps, 2 modified
process steps and 1 entirely new process.