Cybersecurity is crucial in today’s world, as our society increasingly relies on connected infrastructure and devices. In the field of railways, connected trains and infrastructure are seen as a major source of improvement for the management of traffic and capacity, energy efficiency, and network communication. But this trend also means more potential threats of cyber-attacks. To protect the rolling stock and fixed installations, the support of adequate tools and requirements is needed.

CENELEC contributes to providing this protection with the brand new CLC/TS 50701 ‘Railway applications – Cybersecurity’ developed by ‘CLC/TC 9X - Electrical and electronic applications for railways’.

This Technical Specification is a major landmark for the European railway sector, as it aims to provide requirements and recommendations to handle cybersecurity in a unified way for the railway sector.

2021 is the European Year of Rail. On this occasion, CEN and CENELEC are proud to highlight the important role European standards play to ensure the well-functioning of a key sector for the future of Europe. Standardization on railways application is part of CEN and CENELEC’s wider work on transportation, a complex and large portfolio: it includes 1234 standards from CEN and CENELEC. These standards are mainly developed by two Technical Committees (TCs), CEN/TC 256 'Railway Applications' and CLC/TC 9X 'Electrical and electronic applications for railways'. In particular, standards on rail cover a wide range of topics specifically related to railways applications (products, processes and services), such as, among others, safety, rolling stock capacity, system efficiency, as well as cybersecurity, digitalisation, and automatic couplings. This work on rail contributes massively to the development of safe, innovative and efficient railway systems infrastructure, rolling stock and systems, and supports the EU in its strategic ambitions.