Is safety and security certification important?

By Codasip

April 24, 2024

Many suppliers in the automotive supply chain make claims about the functional safety and security of their products, often using certification as a means. The main aim, perhaps, is to provide confidence to their potential customers that their products, developed out-of-context (ooC), have the attributes necessary for cybersecurity or the achievement of functional safety. As we go lower down the supply chain, the more we see development out-of-context. An ooC development is based primarily on assumptions of parent requirements, use cases, etc. but crucially, it is the alignment of the assumptions to the actual system components integrated in the item at the vehicle level. These assumptions play a pivotal role in determining the component’s cybersecurity and safety integrity level (ASIL in the automotive domain) and must be aligned with the safety requirements of the integrated system. Any discrepancies or oversights can jeopardize the overall safety goal at the vehicle level, potentially leading to hazardous events and vulnerabilities. Integration of a set of components based on hope alone is bound to lead to some issues. Therefore, it is imperative to meticulously validate and, where necessary, adjust these assumptions to ensure safety, security and reliability of the system. Certification goes much deeper than providing a certificate on an A4 sheet of paper, rather, it can play an important role in assurance activities for both the integrator and the supplier. As ooC development does not follow the “waterfall” cascade of requirements from the top down. and products are developed for a range of applications, how can certification help in this scenario?

In this blog we dig into the potential added value that independent certification can bring, and we share what Codasip has done so far in this direction.

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