A question of the right perspective

A question of the right perspective

German-Israeli cybersecurity company
As early as September 2016, the automotive OEM Volkswagen founded a business for cybersecurity in the automotive industry – together with three leading Israeli experts and their teams. Ever since, the company has been developing advanced solutions in cybersecurity for the next generation of networked automobiles and mobile services under the leadership of Yuval Diskin, Tsafrir Kats and Tamir Bechor.

This will also apply to the automobile of the future to an increasing degree. Above all, progress in automated driving will drive growth in the connectivity of vehicles. This will result in new interfaces to the transportation infrastructure via Car2X and to other vehicles via Car2Car. The connected car of the future is expected to interact autonomously with numerous data networks operated by other services and providers. The complex network of control units in the vehicle and communication with the cloud both increase the risk that unauthorised parties could gain access to the car or the infrastructure connected to it.

That is why CYMOTIVE, together with Volkswagen, will be further optimising the data security of vehicles and their control units.

The CYMOTIVE employee keeps looking through the lens of his microscope and checks on the progress of his efforts on the computer screen.

With a gentle touch, he rearranges the smallest hardware components – just a fraction of a millimetre in size – or combines them with other components. His goal is to reveal any security gaps in the hardware and in the data interfaces between the processors. Hackers might analyse which data is exchanged between the small chip sets and then attack this weak link.

... and the 'Blue team'
Behind the next glass wall, the process continues with the so-called 'Blue Team' – the defensive department of Cymotive. When attackers find an open digital door in the system, the defender's task is to work out a technical opportunity to close this door. The objective is to have the findings flow back into a component's development. This sustainably fills a potential security gap.

But this is not all, the Blue Team also serves as the R&D centre for security solutions for the connected car and its eco system. The team works together with Volkswagen’s development teams to embed state-of-the-art security solutions into the carmaker’s future platforms.

Ralf Milke, Head of the Electrics and Electronics Development, Body Electronics and Vehicle Electrical Systems Department at Volkswagen, emphasises this: "Data security is really the trust our customers place in the vehicle. With growing connectivity, today's technical approaches are no longer adequate for the digital vehicle. Extending our own know-how and collaborating more intensively with international experts therefore represent an important step in satisfying the expectations of our customers."

His colleague, Beate Hofer, Head of Information Security at the Volkswagen Group adds this: "Cybersecurity is more than just technical safeguarding of the infrastructure and systems. It also involves IT security processes, information security risk management, classification of information and more. However, to address the issue of cybersecurity effectively, we also need a new perspective – and indeed that of a hacker."