E-Corridor-Container

Transportation systems such as trains, buses, airplanes, and car-sharing services generate a wide variety of data, including technical information and passenger data. To date, there is no unified platform capable of collecting this data across countries and systems and making it available to transportation companies.

The E-Corridor project aims to change that. A total of 14 European project partners, led by the Italian research institute CNR, aim to develop a framework for a data exchange platform to securely share a wide variety of information from transportation systems in compliance with data protection regulations and to use this information to develop new services.

Secure Identity Management

To ensure secure data exchange between the various nodes of the platform, experts at Fraunhofer SIT are developing a secure identity management system. This allows data to be securely exchanged between travelers and the individual systems, for example between a driver and a car in car-sharing or at a self-check-in kiosk at an airport.

The identity management system is based on hardware trust anchors, i.e., a type of secure chip called a Trusted Platform Module (TPM 2.0). This trust anchor is then used to secure the protocols for authentication or general data transmission, enabling secure data exchange. Fraunhofer SIT brings its many years of experience and expertise in the field of trusted computing to this project.

Cyber Threat Analysis for Transportation Systems

The E-Corridor platform is also intended to be used to provide a Europe-wide, comprehensive cyber threat analysis for transportation systems: This will involve analyzing technical data streams from transportation systems—such as car-sharing vehicles, bus fleets, trains, and aircraft—to detect potential cyberattacks or malfunctions at an early stage.

To this end, researchers at Fraunhofer SIT will train a machine learning system that continuously analyzes operational, system, and network data within the vehicle and sounds an alarm when deviations from normal operation occur (intrusion detection). This allows potential cyberattacks on a transportation system, as well as malfunctions, failures, and other critical situations, to be detected early on. Experts in cyber-physical systems are dedicated to this task.

About the Project

The project will run until May 2023 and has a budget of 5.9 million euros. E-Corridor is funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. More information about E-Corridor is available on the project website.