5GAA Efficient Security Provisioning System

Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication is at our doorsteps. It is a key part of the future of connected vehicles and autonomous driving as it enables infrastructure, pedestrians and vehicles to interact, thus taking the transportation ecosystem to the next level. Security plays an important role in building trust in V2X, protecting users’ privacy, and enabling safety, efficiency and comfort.

Efforts to reinforce trust in this ecosystem are driving global initiatives to develop, standardise and implement Security Credential Management Systems (SCMS). As a consequence, different stakeholders have put forward their requirements leading to differing, non-interoperable regional designs. The 5G Automotive Association (5GAA) has evaluated existing system designs and their regulatory requirements, as well as identified some new ‘advanced’ features. The resulting recommendations for improved design fulfilling these security and privacy requirements in a large-scale system are outlined in this white paper.

With the objective to integrate new technical opportunities in the automotive world, as afforded by widespread cellular connectivity, and to identify potential design simplifications, an analysis and evaluation of existing system designs has been completed over the last year. These existing designs are region-specific and not fully interoperable due to differing security and privacy requirements.  Some ecosystem stakeholders within 5GAA challenged this status quo on several levels and evaluated these regional V2X security approaches.

The paper summarises the design simplifications, discusses their rationale and impact, and proposes an updated design for large-scale deployment and cross-regional interoperability called the ‘Efficient Security Provisioning System’ (ESPS). The paper outlines potential simplifications to the existing V2X credential management systems.