The Case for Modeling Security, Privacy, Usability and Reliability (SPUR) in Automotive Software

Over the past five years, there has been considerable growth and established value in the practice of modeling automotive software requirements. Much of this growth has been centered on requirements of software associated with the established functional areas of an automobile, such as those associated with powertrain, chassis, body, safety and infotainment. This paper makes a case for modeling four additional attributes that are increasingly important as vehicles become information conduits: security, privacy, usability, and reliability. These four attributes are important in creating specifications for embedded in-vehicle automotive software. This paper examines the automobile context of security, privacy, usability and reliability (SPUR). In an automobile safety is paramount, and while leisure may certainly be found in an automobile, compromising driver attention could mean loss of life or serious injury and loss of productivity. All this makes the automobile a very special case of information and physical mobility — as in the cases of cellular phone based mobility, and mass transportation (bus, train, ship, airplane) based mobility. Several real-world use-cases are reviewed to illustrate both the consumer and system needs associated with SPUR in the automobile and to highlight the associated functional and non-functional requirements. From these requirements the underlying architectural elements of automotive SPUR are also derived. Broadly speaking these elements span three software service domains: the off-board enterprise software domain, the nomadic (device or service) software domain and the embedded (in-vehicle) software domain all of which need to work in tandem for the creation and complete lifecycle management of automotive software.