Israeli vehicle cyber security company Karamba Security, which has an office in Bloomfield Hills, followed up its January appearance at CES 2020 in Las Vegas with a roadshow-like event last week at the Novi Sheraton to give potential customers a close look at the cyber protection it can offer to vehicles.
Karamba was founded in 2016 to combat this threat via software that is installed in a vehicle during its development. It currently is working with Japanese infotainment system supplier Alps Alpine, which supplies its wares to Audi, Volvo, and the Detroit three automakers. It also has worked on research papers with DENSO.
“Automotive cyber security is a multi-layered problem that requires a multi-layered solution,” says Tal Ben-David, co-founder and vice president of research and development for Karamba Security. “We provide add-on software when a vehicle is in development. We also provide updates when that software is updated.”
The first layer of protection is Karamba VCode, which helps manufacturers identify, prioritize, and mitigate security gaps in code security configurations.
Karamba XGuard uses automatically generated control flow integrity and binaries whitelisting to validate device binaries and memory usage during runtime while detecting and blocking attempts to insert malicious code.
Other Karamba systems collect suspicious data and send it back to the OEM for analysis.
“When a vehicle is protected from cyberattacks, not only is that driver protected, but the OEM is protected from emergency recalls,” says Ben-David who adds that vehicles aren’t the only devices that need cyber protection.
Any device that is connected to the internet, a company’s printer, for instance should be protected.
“The need exists in any connected device that can become a portal to the entire network of an enterprise,” says Ben-David.
To that end, Karamba Security is working with Stanley Black and Decker and the surveillance camera unit of Hitachi to improve their cyber protection.
