BlackBerry Limited has announced its commitment to helping the private and public sectors come together to accelerate the development of Smart Cities and Intelligent Transportation Systems with a Security Credential Management System (SCMS) service.

BlackBerry is addressing this need by making available today, with no service fees to automakers and public offices involved in smart city and connected vehicle pilots, a SCMS service which provides the mechanism for vehicles and infrastructure, such as traffic lights, to exchange information in a trustworthy and private manner using digital certificates.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, as connected vehicle applications exchange information among vehicles, roadway infrastructure, traffic management centers, and wireless mobile devices, a security system is needed to ensure that users can trust the validity of information received from other systems.

The SCMS service is based on BlackBerry’s Certicom technology and offers a secure and reliable hosted Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) which can manage certificates on behalf of an organization or an entire ecosystem. The service is designed to scale to support national and transnational deployments, allowing OEMs and public officials to take advantage of a turnkey cloud-based service for vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) certificate issuance and lifecycle management. BlackBerry can also support hybrid SCMS solutions optimized for high-volume vehicle production.

“The future of autonomous vehicles cannot be realized until intelligent transportation systems are put in place,” said John Chen, Executive Chairman & CEO, BlackBerry. “By removing barriers such as security, privacy, and cost, we believe our SCMS service will help accelerate the many smart city and connected vehicle pilot programs taking place around the world.”

The Hon’ble Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, provided the following statement in response to BlackBerry’s new service: “Our government is focused on ensuring all Canadians stand to benefit from digital transformation.‎ BlackBerry’s commitment to advancing Smart Cities is yet another step forward for Canadian Innovation. Building on Canada’s promising advancements in the field of autonomous vehicles, it will help our communities use information and communications technology in a way that is secure and safe to improve their residents' lives.”

BlackBerry’s new service has been interoperability tested in multiple OmniAir Consortium PlugFests held earlier this year. The company’s first project using the new SCMS service will be in partnership with Invest Ottawa, who will leverage it within a secure 16-kilometre road autonomous vehicle (AV) test track that resembles a miniature city, complete with pavement markings, traffic lights, stop signs, and pedestrian crosswalks.

“We are delighted to partner with BlackBerry to demonstrate this SCMS service in a variety of V2X applications,” said Kelly Daize, Director of the CAV Program, Invest Ottawa. “Our integrated public and private AV test tracks are equipped with GPS, DSRC, Wi-Fi, 4G/LTE and 5G, making this the first AV test environment of its kind in North America. We look forward to leveraging the world-class security and analytic capabilities of BlackBerry and making them available to innovators, firms, and regions to accelerate the secure deployment of AVs, Intelligent Transportation Systems, and smart cities.”

Roger Lanctot, Director Automotive Connected Mobility, Strategy Analytics, added, “BlackBerry is taking a major step forward in support of smart city and connected car development efforts. While regulators are still in the process of defining what such a system might look like and how it will be deployed, BlackBerry’s offering will allow for the testing of various concepts and technologies right away in support of inter-vehicle and vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure applications.”