NCSC Workshop on Safety v Security: Challenges and Applications in the Cyber Security Era

The Cyber Security Centre at the University of Southampton, supported by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), organised and run the first NCSC Workshop on “Safety v Security: challenges and applications in the cyber security era.” It was a great opportunity to engage in inter-disciplinary dialogue on real-world challenges in current and future cyber-physical safety-critical systems.

About the workshop

The workshop touched on a large variety of applications, including automotive, avionics and CNI, and testified the key role safety and security can have in the development of reliable, trustworthy modern systems.

Key outcomes

The workshop brought together over 60 attendees from academia, industry and government, including NCSC and CPNI, to discuss pressing security challenges in modern inter-connected cyber-physical safety-critical systems.

It emerges that we must stop addressing safety and security as different (alternatively, giving safety priority over security, or vice versa). Both have a common target: ensuring systems will work and continue working as expected. Some additional key findings from the discussion:

We must prepare to address threats as they emerge.
AI appears to be a game changer but also the key concern for the security and safety of next generation autonomy systems.