Doctoral Defense - Nicholas Polanco

About the Event

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Michigan State University

Ph.D. Dissertation Defense 

December 5, 2025 at 11:00AM EST

Zoom Meeting

Contact Advisor or Department for Zoom Information

Abstract

Enabling a Multi-Pronged Socio-technical Approach to Address Automotive Cybersecurity

By: Nicholas Polanco

Advisor: Betty H.C. Cheng

The increase of inward-facing and outward-facing communication used by modern vehicles with automated features expands the breadth and depth of automotive cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Furthermore, because of the prominent role that human behavior plays in the lifetime of a vehicle, social and human-based factors must be considered in tandem with the technical factors when addressing cybersecurity. A focus on informing and enabling stakeholders and their corresponding actions will promote security of the vehicle through a human-focused approach. The diverse stakeholders and their interactions with a modern day vehicle cover a spectrum of vulnerabilities that need to be secured. Example stakeholders include the consumer using the vehicle, the technicians working on the car, and the engineers designing the software. Stakeholder-aware strategies can be applied in both a social and technical manner to increase preventative security measures for autonomous vehicles. By leveraging theoretical foundations from the criminology domain, we create reusable social and technical stakeholder-based solutions applicable to the vehicle and its supporting infrastructures, that can be used by different stakeholders interacting with the vehicle. In this dissertation, we take an interdisciplinary approach to address automotive cybersecurity where we synergistically combine cybercrime theory, human factors, and technical solutions to develop reusable prevention and detection techniques.