Car Connectivity Consortium’s Global Digital Key Standard Receives Certification from Federal Office for Information Security

Published in Business Wire on May 29, 2024.

Security verification of the CCC Digital Key™ Applet Protection Profile allows smart device manufacturers around the world to deliver more secure vehicle-to-device access.

BEAVERTON, Ore.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC), a cross-industry standards organization dedicated to advancing device-to-car connectivity solutions, today announced that the CCC Digital Key™ Applet Protection Profile complies with the standards of the renowned German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), becoming the only digital key application to receive this security designation. The BSI certification ensures this element of the larger CCC Digital Key architecture meets their highest threshold for security, so device and vehicle OEMs can ensure their users are able to securely and safely access their vehicles, create and delete digital keys, share a digital key with others, and start their vehicle. With digital keys, manufacturers must ensure their implementations are designed to prevent known hardware- and software-based attacks, such as tampering, storage intrusion, cloning, relay attacks, and unauthorized access.

“We appreciate how the CCC has incorporated the highest cybersecurity requirements into its standard since inception,” remarked Dr. Gerhard Schabhüser from BSI. “Our mission is to shape information security in digitization through prevention, detection, and reaction. Implementing a ‘security-by-design’ approach, as the CCC Digital Key does, allows us to deliver on this, so we are pleased to verify their protection profile and further protect consumers.”

“Security without compromise has been one of our chief priorities in developing the CCC Digital Key specification,” said Alysia Johnson, president of the CCC. “Receiving verification for a key component of our specification from such a credible government agency enables device manufacturers around the world that have been CCC Digital Key certified to signal that their implementation is secure and trusted.”

The BSI verification applies to the CCC Digital Key Release 3, which defines the standardized interface between the vehicle and the device as an NFC-based wireless interface designed for direct vehicle-to-device communication and will be implemented in future specification updates. To learn more about the CCC and CCC Digital Key, please visit carconnectivity.org.