Communication Systems’ Safety and Security Challenges in Railway Environment

Implementation of the communication based train control systems, is directly linked with safety of the train operation. The scope of the solutions as well as proposed way they can be classified have been presented by author at the Transport System Telematics conference in 2016. The communication based train control and management systems’ safety and security impact reference model (CBTC SSIRM model), which was then defined and presented is an entrance point for the complementary communication systems’ safety and security challenges analyse. Article shows why lack of safety and/or security of the communication systems in railway environment jeopardises safety of the whole railway transport system. It describes associated challenges distinguishing at the same time safety and security as well as sender and receiver, input and output, source and destination. Applied types of solutions from hardware and software redundancies via different addressing schemes to cryptographic technics are described and classified forming an important add-on to the SSIRM model in the cybersecurity domain.