Renesas supports ISO/SAE 21434 for automotive MCUs and SoC devices

Renesas Electronics Corporation, a supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced its full commitment to meet the ISO/SAE 21434 road vehicles cybersecurity engineering international standard for its automotive microcontrollers (MCUs) and system-on-chip (SoC) solutions — effective with new developments from January 2022.

This is part of the company’s continued commitment to implement robust automotive cybersecurity management systems (CSMS), as part of the new UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) regulation UN R155.

The commitment reaffirms to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and Tier1 suppliers that Renesas will continue to meet its CSMS responsibilities.

All future Renesas automotive MCUs and SoCs will sequentially follow the ISO/SAE 21434 standard with development starting from January 2022. This includes the company’s 16-bit RL78 and 32-bit RH850 MCUs as well as Renesas’ popular R-Car SoC Family.

“ISO/SAE 21434 is setting the international standard that outlines the requirements for security throughout the entire automotive life cycle, and Renesas has now adopted this standard,” said Takashi Yasumasu, VP of Automotive Core Technology Development Division at Renesas.

Both ISO/SAE 21434 (released on August 31, 2021) and UNECE UN R155 require cybersecurity to be enforced across the entire automotive supply chain. Effective July 2022, for new vehicle types, automotive OEMs will be required to have an automotive CSMS in place to ensure that the stringent cybersecurity processes have been implemented to gain vehicle type approval.

With Renesas’ commitment to ISO/SAE 21434, OEMs and Tier1 suppliers can have confidence in adopting Renesas’ solutions.

“We will establish security process with requirement definition by security analysis, implementation, and evaluation, utilizing and optimizing existing development process,” Yasumasu added. “This enables us to provide products and solutions with appropriate risk mitigation measures according to the risk assessment. Renesas aims to be a trusted partner for customers around the world in the face of the growing automotive security threats posed by CASE.”

Renesas has made significant global contributions to the development of the ISO/SAE 21434 standard. In 2019, Renesas was certified by TÜV Rheinland as compliant with the IEC 62443-4-1 standard, which specifies the requirements for security development process of industrial products.

While leveraging these achievements and experiences, Renesas will continue to upgrade its automotive CSMS process to address new requirements and expectations called out in ISO/SAE 21434 and enhance its effective cybersecurity measures.

Renesas’ automotive CSMS will assign not only leaders responsible for hardware and software security development, but also system security leaders to address system use cases, aiming to provide not only compliance with standards but also optimal solutions.