Connected Vehicle Cybersecurity Solutions: Our Investment in Upstream Security

We are very excited to announce our investment in Upstream Security’s Series C financing round. Upstream has developed an automotive cybersecurity platform purpose-built for protecting connected vehicles in terms of communication data between vehicles or command and control servers without the need of additional hardware or software. This fundraise will be used to double down on Upstream’s growth and global expansion to target additional customer groups. Our investment reinforces our commitment to forward-thinking entrepreneurs and underscores our efforts to advance in connected car services and raise the level of safety on the road through cybersecurity.

The automotive industry is undergoing rapid transformation and becoming a smart mobility ecosystem. Connectivity enables additional opportunities and value creation through services to the vehicle. At the same time, it comes in hand with a range of risks that never existed before and puts extra emphasis on cybersecurity.

Addressing these challenges, new technologies and tools on the automotive cybersecurity market are enabling OEMs to thwart future attacks and keep their products and passengers safe. In the landscape of automotive cybersecurity companies, Upstream stands out and empowers automotive stakeholders including OEMs, Tier 1 and 2 suppliers and mobility service providers to leverage their data, secure their assets and comply with cybersecurity regulations:

1)    Upstream does not require additional hardware or software installation in-car. The result is fast deployment in existing and new vehicles, as no lengthy implementations are needed thanks to Upstream’s cloud setup.

2)    The approach of focusing not on the individual sources of the connected system (connected vehicles, servers, mobile apps) but rather on the data feeds in between makes the difference:

a)    Upstream is deployed in each customer’s private cloud and accesses the communication streams of the vehicle.

b)    The data is anonymized, replicated and directed to Upstream without interfering with normal data-flows (GDPR and privacy compliant).

c)     At Upstream, the data is normalized into one single processing language and then runs through machine learning modules - where profiles for individual vehicles are created.

d)    Finally, a security engine constantly monitors the communications involving the car, servers and mobile app - and instantly engages, in case an anomaly or a violation occurs. Actionable insights are generated and integrated into the vehicle security operations center (VSOC).

3)    Through normalizing the data before processing, Upstream's solution can be easily deployed by all OEMs, fleet providers and MSSPs.

As a result, Upstream can quickly learn the most typical threats across the industry and thereby rapidly improve anomaly detection and adapt to new hazards.

Our investment in Upstream Security is derived from the conviction that by integrating the solution within the key data core of OEMs, Upstream can set a standard and fundament, on which insurance and telematics products can be launched in the future - opening up billions of addressable market for automotive data.

We believe that Upstream Security is leading the implementation of cybersecurity for the connected car market and we are extremely excited to invest in the Series C and join Yoav Levy and the team on their mission to scale cybersecurity for the connected car era.