Design of a Telematics System for Saab Giraffe AMB

Abstract

Telematics is a technology that is not widely spread in the defense industry. This master thesis report presents some of the criteria that must be fulfilled in order to introduce a wireless unit that communicates via GSM in a radar station from Saab Electronics Defence. The wireless unit is designed as a diagnostics tool called the Saab Telematics Unit (STU). It is running on an embedded Linux platform from Host Mobility and communicates with Saab’s computers via Ethernet. All information is presented in a .NET web platform together with a MySQL database and a standard file server. The master thesis shows that the industry has been skeptical to wireless solutions due to security risks, like hijacking of the radar via the wireless connection. Countermeasures, for example encryption and VPN-tunneling, can be used to minimize those risks. It is important that an intelligent choice of what is sent over the air is done, so that a security breach does not result in company or military secret information being leaked. The main guidelines that should be followed to guarantee that it follows Saab’s security standards are traceability, information security and disaster recovery. Traceability is the ability to see who has done what. Information security is for example authentication, authorization, encryption, etc. Disaster recovery is a plan of what to do if classified information is leaked or if the system is somehow compromised. As these security concerns have´been addressed, the skepticism from employees at Saab has been reduced. They have more and more begun to see the benefits of telematics and that it can be a secure technology.