Stefan Auerbach, Carlo Bozotti, Richard Clemmer, Frank Fitzek,
Reinhard Ploss and moderator Kilian Reichert

Carlo Bozotti, President and CEO of STMicroelectronics agreed with Auerbach that the industry has responsibility and that an horizontal approach to security is important. But he added that protection on the device level remains important. 'We need to make sure each of these objects are becoming more secure. Because any object is potentially the door for an attacker to gain access to the network. We need to protect all the nodes.'

Professor Fitzek holds a different view. There will be simply too many devices and manufacturers to guarantee the quality of each device. Nor can users be expected to know whether their device is behaving properly in the larger network. Therefore, the network should take precedent. 'If your automated car has been hacked, you don't have to know that it is compromised. There are 20 cars around you that should know your vehicle is misbehaving and report it. The question is: does the network operator have the administrative privileges to toss compromised nodes from the network? If we play it right, the network becomes the provider of safety and security'.

Dr. Reinhard Ploss, CEO of Infineon Technologies, agreed with Fitzek that the network approach is important. But he stressed that certain systems need to be properly secured by themselves. 'Systems such as robots and automated cars can cause a lot of damage when things go wrong. Therefore you can not allow any failure. We need to harden cars and robots and shield them against any attack. We need security on both a system and a network level.'