Efficient & Reliable Transportation of Consigments (ERTOC)

This team is largely responsible for information security and assurance aspects of the proposed system, particularly with regards to data collection (from a variety of sources), storage (in a central data hub), and provision of access to the data (through the proposed open API). The proposed effort will investigate and evaluate technical and procedural mechanisms to ensure that: (1) access to the central data hub is authorised and strictly monitored for operational conformity. Protocols, based on mutual authentication, and access logging, for non-repudiation, will be designed and evaluated, (2) anonymity and privacy of consignments, drivers and vehicles is maintained. This may involve forcing partial and restricted views of the central hub upon access, and where strictly necessary for the purposes of application, pseudonymity is used to provide a coherent view of data, (3) all forms of networked communication are authenticated, and preserve confidentiality where necessary. Both collection of vehicle data and access to the central hub by various stakeholders is to be protected as such. Industry standard protocols such as IPSec, SSH and SSL, providing such measures over Internet Protocol (IP) will be evaluated for purpose, and finally (4) the system is designed to provide configurable access to data that is both comprehensive and flexible, with a view to providing administrators of the system to control and mediate access. Procedural mechanisms will be proposed for periodic reviews of information security to help administrators change and optimise access as and when necessary. Once the system is implemented and ready for trial, the team will undertake purpose-designed penetration tests to validate the system against any vulnerabilities, particularly due to the underlying operating system and application platforms. Such tests should serve to provide confidence in the rigorous design and implementation of the system.