Interview with Dr. Ikjot Saini, co-director at SHIELD Automotive Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence and assistant professor at the University of Windsor’s school of computer science in Ontario, Canada.
When it comes to cybersecurity, Dr. Ikjot Saini has always been a visionary, and her area of specialty quickly became security for connected automobiles, the subject of her PhD. In 2021, her accomplishments in research, standardization, and knowledge transfer won her the award of Cyber Woman of the Year from the Automotive Parts Association of Canada.
In this interview, she explains how she came to specialize in automobile security, which she likens to solving puzzles and games, and how academic research in this area brought these subjects to the mainstream media and raised awareness about this important issue. Research and innovation, education and training, and knowledge transfer and awareness are the key pillars of her outreach through teaching, consulting, and working with SHIELD.
Her main message to developers: “Security is not an overhead, make sure the code is secure from the beginning and it starts with requirements analysis.” She would like to see a virtual assistant for developers and urges managers to leave time in the development lifecycle for self-testing and peer review during the code development lifecycle.
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Additional Resource: MISRA Compliance Standard for Automobile Cyber Security
Linked In Group for SHIELD Automotive Cybersecurity Center of Influence.
