The growing dependence on software in railway fleet maintenance makes updating on-board systems a critical factor for service availability and operational cybersecurity. Long life cycles and stringent regulatory requirements, coupled with irregular wireless coverage, mean frequent and costly on-site interventions.

This is the context in which KonnOTA has emerged, an R&D project developed within the framework of the HAZITEK programme (ZL-2025/00370), managed by SPRI (Basque Government), and focused on the cyber-secure remote Over The Air (OTA) updating of on-board railway systems. The project is led by Bilerro Solutions, a Velatia group company with its origins in Ikusi and specialising in the integration and implementation of operational embedded systems.

KonnOTA addresses the challenge of enabling a secure OTA remote update system for software assets deployed on embedded edge devices, managed from the Remote Management System (RMS) platform. The solution incorporates version control, integrity verification, encryption and automatic rollback mechanisms, ensuring operational continuity in adverse connectivity conditions.

The project investigates the use of autonomous agents based on lightweight language models (SLMs) to support the deployment and rollback of updates, reducing dependence on external supervision and strengthening system resilience.

From a technical and market perspective, KonnOTA contributes to reducing maintenance costs and increasing availability, while also supporting cybersecurity in railway infrastructure. The project starts at TRL 4 and aims to reach TRL 6, with a view to validation in representative environments and subsequent industrialisation.