The Threats, Risks and Opportunities for Security of Autonomous Vehicles: New Research for the ASIS Foundation

A presentation from the ASIS Foundation

New research for the ASIS Foundation reports on the threats, risks, and opportunities presented by autonomous vehicles (AVs) - systems that can operate with varying degrees of human input or none - in a variety of contexts. With an international focus and based on a comprehensive literature review, the webinar examines categories of AV (air, land and sea and with varying degrees of autonomy), as well as and opportunities presented, key risks and threats, the regulatory environment, and the implications for the security sector. It will show how security practitioners can benefit from advances in AV technologies, and enhance protections from the threats that AVs present.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion, participants will be able to:

1. Recognize the security risks and threats presented both to AVs employed by their organizations or clients, as part of the growing cyber-physical organizational landscape, and from AVs, as a growing aspect of organizational risk.
2. Identify key prevention, detection, and mitigation countermeasures to address such risks and threats.
3. Understand the benefits of AVs that are transforming other sectors and incorporate them more actively in the security arsenal.
4. Recognize key dimensions of the regulatory environment applicable to the corporate use of AVs.

Presenters*

Professor Alison Wakefield is Co-Director of the Cybersecurity and Criminology Centre at the University of West London, UK. She is an academic criminologist and security studies specialist with an international profile in both the academic and practitioner communities. Alison’s research interests are in all matters security, and her latest book Security and Crime: Converging Perspectives on a Complex World (Sage, 2021) examines security trends across multiple dimensions, including chapters on international, regional, national, local, individual, cyber, corporate and maritime perspectives. Alison’s current research is focused on security convergence and managing complexity in security risk management. She holds a number of pro bono roles, including those of Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based security and defence think tank; Commissioner on the UK’s National Preparedness Commission; Academic Advisor to the Chartered Security Professionals Registration Authority; Chair Emeritus of the Security Institute, having served as Chair from 2018 to 2020; Advisory Board member for Resilience First, the London Cyber Resilience Centre, and the International Security and International Cyber Expos; and Editorial Board member for several international journals including Security Journal. Alison has been an ASIS member since 2021.

Professor Peter Lee is a Professor of Applied Ethics and Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Portsmouth, UK. His research has spanned the politics and ethics of war, the ethical, operational and other human aspects of UK Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (drone) operations, and the ethics of AI and autonomous weapon systems. In 2014 Peter was an expert ethics contributor to the first International Committee of the Red Cross Conference on ‘Autonomous Weapon Systems: Technical, Military, Legal and Humanitarian Aspects’. In 2015/2016, he was a member of the UK Department for Transport Oversight Committee for the public dialogue on ‘The Use and Development of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems and Small Drones in the United Kingdom’, which addressed issues including privacy, ethics and legality, flight safety, policing, and public education. From 2016-2018 he was granted unprecedented research access to the two RAF Reaper (drone) squadrons for his book, Reaper Force. In 2020 Peter led two research projects which explored legal, ethical, and moral perspectives on advanced technology and emerging weapon systems (DSTL-funded) and, separately, moral injury in police online child sex crime investigators and RAF Reaper (drone) operators (CREST-funded). In April 2023 he commenced a collaborative EPSRC-funded project to create a Trustworthy Autonomous Robotic Drone System to Support Battlefield Casualty Triage. He is a founding member of the UK Ministry of Defence Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy Ethics Advisory Panel and in 2022 contributed to the UK MOD’s now-published AI Ethics Principles. He is an Expert Adviser of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drones and Modern Conflict.

Ishmael Bhila is a doctoral candidate in the School of Law at the University of Portsmouth, UK, researching in/exclusion in the making of norms relating to autonomous weapons systems. Ishmael’s work looks at the interface of emerging technologies, power, and marginality. Ishmael has been involved in global advocacy on issues relating to disarmament and autonomy in weapons systems since 2022. His work includes engagement with and analysis of the discussions surrounding autonomous weapons systems in the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (GGE on LAWS). He is also currently involved in projects looking at (1) meaningful human control and accountability in security assistance in Africa, and (2) systems of cooperation in autonomous weapons systems discourse and their impact on vulnerable populations whose lives are seen as ‘lose-able’, ‘injurable’, and ‘disposable’. Ishmael is undertaking these projects through Research Fellowships in the BMBF-competence network Meaningful Human Control – Autonomous Weapon Systems between Regulation and Reflexion (MEHUCO) project at Paderborn University and in the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1187 “Media of Cooperation” at the University of Siegen.

*Note:  Speakers and content are subject to change without notice.

Credit Information

Completion of this webinar is eligible for 1 CPE credit.  CPE credits for ASIS-sponsored webinars will be updated in your user profile within 48 hours of completion.  Self-reporting of CPE credits is not required.