Audi works with its own "hackers" to test the new systems in its vehicles

Today, in an increasingly connected world, the violation of our privacy or the theft of information is something that is practically commonplace and, logically, is a growing concern. Now, let’s carry all this concern over to the cars of tomorrow, those that will drive autonomously and be connected to everything around them, and concern will also be quite high.

Needless to say, this concern is also present among car manufacturers, who must have complete confidence that their final product is safe enough for their customers. One of the brands already working on this front is Audi, thanks to the creation of the Security Laboratory, tasked with investigating any kind of flaw that hackers could exploit to access the vehicle’s various data or even compromise the safety of its occupants.

It is surprising how little it takes for a person to take control of a car: a smartphone and a WiFi connection are enough. As connectivity between cars and everything around them increases, along with the advances made every day in connectivity itself, this becomes increasingly worrying. And how does Audi approach this issue? Quite simply, by testing its systems with its own “hackers”.

To give you an idea of the importance of the people working in the Security Laboratory, all of them are required to remain anonymous. One of these people also explains that, in functions such as the Audi AI remote parking pilot assistant, the work of all of them is already at hand, where collaboration between engineers and cyberattack experts becomes essential, since the latter explain to the former how a given system could be sabotaged, so that the engineers can devise new firewalls.

At Audi they are also working on a network architecture in which some vehicle systems are isolated from others through different security requirements. This way, if one system is successfully sabotaged, the rest of the systems will not be affected, thus preventing a chain-reaction failure. In addition, they also predict that all of this will lead to a new line of business, in which future customers will be able to purchase various functions for their vehicles after they have been bought, somewhat like the updates we install on our smartphones, tablets, and so on.

As you can see, the car industry’s concern is now twofold. Until now, all concern focused on protecting people from machines, but today it is also necessary to protect the machine from the people who want to use it for other purposes.