Safety in the Driver’s Seat

Automotive engineers and innovators want to be the first to bring exciting new connected features onto the latest car models, and consumers continue to demand more. The downside: That connectedness to the Internet now means the industry faces more cyber exposure and cyber threats than ever before.

One leading global auto manufacturer was among the first to recognize this emerging risk, and unlike many of Booz Allen’s clients―for whom cybersecurity means protecting intellectual property and employee information—the landmark realization that cybersecurity also means protecting people’s lives suddenly became one of the automotive industry’s highest priorities.

Consumers also started demanding security when in July 2015, news broke that a vehicle was hacked at highway speeds. By that time—thanks to Booz Allen’s consultative approach and cybersecurity expertise—this global automaker (who was not the subject of the 2015 hack) already had a strategy in place to respond to such incidents and secure its vehicles. Booz Allen’s team had successfully guided this client through a cultural and data-driven transformation designed to support and facilitate its comprehensive vehicle cybersecurity program, going from having no response capability to setting the market standard for response planning in 6 months.

Overcoming “a challenge that no one had ever addressed that would require cyber expertise and the ability to bridge internal cultural and data divides—this is where Booz Allen excels,” says Vice President Sedar LaBarre. “For us, success meant securing the vehicles we all rely on to transport our families and bringing our client to the industry forefront.”

Our ability to quickly build a team with government security and intelligence experience, analytics and telematics capabilities, and commercial manufacturing expertise allowed us to define the scope of vehicle cybersecurity and address the connected vehicle ecosystem as a whole.

Booz Allen also realized success was as much about culture as it was about engineering. We worked shoulder to shoulder with staff across this automaker's organization to transform their environment from an engineering to a security mindset. After Booz Allen’s recommendation to leadership that the company stand up an internal Product Cybersecurity team led by a new chief product cybersecurity officer, it took only 6 weeks to become a reality and for the client to reprioritize risk mitigation investments.

“We were trusted to fearlessly challenge and disrupt the status quo across the client organization,” says Sedar. “In the face of something that seemed impossible, Booz Allen’s team delivered the best of what our firm has to offer, enabling the protection of millions of drivers and transforming the way this client―and now the industry—identifies, assesses, and responds to vehicle cybersecurity.”