Driving Automotive
Cybersecurity Forward

VicOne, NXP, AWS, and Inventec Collaborate on
Pre-Integrated and Comprehensive Cybersecurity
Solution for Software-Defined Vehicles
Cybersecurity Risks of Software-Defined Vehicles
The automotive industry has entered a new era marked by connected, software-driven, and personalizedexperiences. With the clear trend toward software-defined vehicles (SDVs), the ability to rapidly evolve
software can garner decisive competitive advantages. However, these advancements also bringheightened susceptibility to cyberattacks.
The complex and interconnected nature of modern vehicles has raised the stakes for OEMs and Tier
1 suppliers, compelling them to rethink their cybersecurity capabilities. As the automotive landscape
becomes more connected and software-oriented, it inevitably becomes a target for malicious actors,
amplifying the need for robust security measures. What was once a concern primarily for financial
implications has now evolved into a potential threat to human lives. It is imperative for industry leaders
to prioritize and enhance their cybersecurity efforts to safeguard the automotive industry against theemerging risks:•More motivation for attackers. Connected cars gather enormous amounts of valuable data, such as
driving behavior, personally identifiable information (PII), vehicle identification numbers, geolocation,and driving history. Malicious actors could steal this data for financial gain and even abuse it forcyberattacks that could endanger vehicles and their drivers.

•Increasing number of attack vectors. Internet-of-things (IoT) technology can deliver a more
personalized driving experience to meet the specific preferences of individual drivers. However, italso significantly expands the attack surface of a vehicle with vectors such as telematics systems,
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ultra-wideband (UWB), on-board diagnostics (OBD-II), GPS, mobile phones, and evencharging stations, making it harder to defend.

•Lower barrier for successful attacks. Using open-source information like blog posts, amateurs
could easily hack connected vehicles, which are essentially data centers on wheels. In January 2022,
for example, news reports emerged about a teen hacker who exploited a bug to control 25 Tesla cars
remotely.

Challenges for OEMs and Suppliers
New concerns specific to the automotive and transportation industry are arising alongside its constantevolution, bringing new challenges to OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers:•Pressures from new standards and regulations. New standards and regulations such as ISO/SAE
21434 and UN R155 require OEMs and suppliers to ensure that their vehicles and management
systems are equipped with new cybersecurity features. But for OEMs and suppliers, creating andimplementing a cybersecurity compliance strategy from scratch can be costly and burdensome.

•Pressures from ever-evolving cyberthreats. The interconnected nature of the expanding connectedvehicle ecosystem presents a significant challenge in terms of cybersecurity. With numerous endpoints
and a constantly evolving threat landscape, the attack surface becomes extensive and unpredictable.
Moreover, threat actors have become more sophisticated, adopting advanced tactics and techniques
to maximize the impact of their attacks. This complexity creates a scenario where early detection ofmalicious activities becomes increasingly challenging.

•Scalability concern. Since OEMs are responsible for safeguarding potentially millions of vehicles
on the road, it is essential for them to have cybersecurity solutions that can effectively handle theexpanded attack surface. This requires additional resources and expertise to ensure the protection ofconnected vehicles and their associated services.

•Mitigation complexity. An intricate automotive supply chain poses a rugged terrain to navigate whenit comes to cybersecurity. The average vehicle includes dozens of electronic control units (ECUs) frommultiple suppliers, and a single modern luxury vehicle can integrate as many as 150 ECUs and over ahundred million lines of code. With the involvement of more and more automotive stakeholders andsuppliers, such complexity makes incident response more challenging.

Uniting Forces for a Comprehensive Cybersecurity Solution
In order to assist OEMs and suppliers in effectively tackling the aforementioned challenges and seamlesslytransitioning to SDVs, a collaborative effort involving four parties has been established. This collaboration
aims to offer a comprehensive turnkey solution that addresses all potential threats arising from everevolving attack surfaces.
VicOne, a leading provider of automotive cybersecurity, delivers a broad portfolio of cybersecurity
software and services for the automotive industry. Equipped with proven automotive threat intelligenceto support large-scale connected car deployments, VicOne provides cybersecurity solutions that support
OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers in their defense against evolving threats and their compliance journey with new
standards and regulations.
NXP Semiconductors N.V., the leading provider of automotive processors, provides safe and secure
processing power to help accelerate the shift to SDVs. The NXP S32G vehicle network processor brings
high-performance, real-time applications processing with accelerated networking capabilities, along withadvanced hardware security, to offload its Arm® Cortex® processor cores. S32G processors are optimized
for service-oriented central gateways and vehicle computers, and their development was certified to ISO
26262:2018 functional safety and ISO/SAE 21434 cybersecurity standards.
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), a leading provider of cloud services, provides the AWS IoT FleetWise
service to make it easier for automotive companies to collect, transform, and transfer vehicle data to thecloud in near-real time. Ecosystem players in the automotive industry can use AWS IoT FleetWise to collectand organize vehicle data more easily and to store the data in a standardized way for data analysis inthe cloud.

Inventec, a leading provider of ECUs, offers a highly advanced and production-ready central gateway(CGW) specifically designed for the automotive industry. Powered by NXP’s S32G vehicle network
processor, Inventec’s CGW is pre-integrated with VicOne’s cybersecurity software solutions and the AWS
IoT FleetWise service.
This integration elevates Inventec’s CGW beyond a simple data exchange device, transforming it into an
intelligence center that can provide invaluable cybersecurity intelligence to protect SDVs against threats.
With its powerful edge computing, the CGW efficiently processes real-time data within the vehicle,
enabling prompt detection and response to cyberthreats. This pre-integrated security also makes fora future-ready solution that aligns strongly with compliance requirements such as the ISO/SAE 21434
cybersecurity standard, which advocates ensuring security in the entire vehicle life cycle.

VicOne CloudxNexus(VSOC platform)

AWS
Cloud

In-vehicle gateway (S32G)AWS IoT FleetWise

xCarbon(IDS/IPS)

Central gatewayFigure 1. The roles in the four-way collaboration

Through this four-way collaboration including VicOne, NXP, AWS, and Inventec, a complete pictureof proven electronics in combination with well-integrated security is created, one that can meet theprotection needs of OEMs. This comprehensive solution enhances the automotive industry’s cybersecurity
capabilities and ensures a safer and more secure driving experience for all.

Unveiling the Inner Workings: How Does This Work?
By combining VicOne’s automotive cybersecurity solutions, NXP’s S32G vehicle network processor, theAWS IoT FleetWise service, and Inventec’s CGW, this four-way collaboration offers a comprehensive, preintegrated, and end-to-end protection solution. This robust solution ensures the complete detection andresponse process to combat constantly evolving cyberthreats:•Detect in Real TimeTo effectively thwart threats within in-vehicle networks, the use of deep packet inspection (DPI) iscrucial in detecting the exploitation of system vulnerabilities, combined with the pre-integrated VicOnexCarbon intrusion detection system (IDS) and NXP S32G vehicle network processor in Inventec’s CGW.
VicOne’s xCarbon IDS solution harnesses the S32G’s impressive computing power, which allows forreal-time DPI analysis of Ethernet packets. In addition, powered by an off-board machine learning (ML)engine, xCarbon can distinguish between normal and abnormal operations on the CAN bus to detectmalicious CAN messages, such as messages with abnormal IDs, frequencies, and loads causedby attacks.

•Analyze With Comprehensive Visibility
Once malicious threats are detected, VicOne’s xCarbon transmits the detection logs and system
activities back to VicOne’s xNexus vehicle security operations center (VSOC) platform for further threat
investigation. To optimize bandwidth usage and save cost, xCarbon reports only high-confidence alerts
to xNexus.
Additionally, the pre-integrated AWS IoT FleetWise agent in Inventec’s CGW can collect, transform, andtransfer vehicle telemetry data to xNexus in near-real time. With the capabilities of AWS IoT FleetWise,
threat experts can leverage xNexus to identify suspicious activities and collect more logs dynamicallythrough AWS IoT Core Channel for investigation purposes. The flexibility of AWS IoT FleetWise’s logscollecting mechanism can also lower the effort and time for threat experts to understand theroot cause.
Once vehicle telemetry data and detection logs are transmitted to the xNexus platform, it effectively
correlates this information, providing an enhanced level of visibility and context to the VSOC. Thisenables the VSOC to identify threats and proactively search for potential risks. Unlike traditional VSOC
solutions, xNexus leverages over 30 years of threat intelligence and round-the-clock vulnerability
research by a global network of independent researchers through the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI). Thisextensive knowledge empowers xNexus’ analytics engine to learn attack behaviors and stay aheadof constantly evolving cyberthreats, resulting in a higher rate of detection. In addition, with AI-driven
detection (ML), xNexus combines multiple rules, filters, and a unique analytics engine to deliver early
and accurate threat detection.

•Respond via Unique Virtual PatchAs the automotive industry involves an increasing number of stakeholders and suppliers, thecomplexity of incident response becomes more challenging. To address this, the combination of
the xNexus VSOC platform and the xCarbon intrusion prevention system (IPS) offers a solution thatprovides virtual patches for effective postproduction mitigations.
By leveraging virtual patching, xCarbon enforces attack signatures and security rules, allowing OEMs
to protect the systems without making any changes. This approach provides an average of 102 days ofprotection while waiting for a vendor patch to become available. Since xCarbon is already integrated
with the NXP S32G processor in Inventec’s CGW, OEMs can deploy virtual patches without requiring
code changes or firmware updates. This capability helps block zero-day exploits and gives OEMs moretime to develop mitigation plans and solutions.

All of the above processes have been validated on Inventec’s mature CGW.

Central gateway
In-vehicle gateway (S32G)
Inspection

Virtual patchxCarbon(IDS/IPS)

EthernetpacketsCANframes

AWS IoT FleetWise

Vehicle dataDetection logs
System activity

Cybersecurity investigation
OEM data lakexNexus(VSOC platform)

Figure 2. A comprehensive, pre-integrated, and end-to-end protection
through a four-way collaboration including VicOne, NXP, AWS, and Inventec

Conclusion
This envisioned four-way collaboration stems from the pre-integrated protection already offered byVicOne to Inventec’s CGW and, by relation, NXP’s S32G platform for vehicle network processing. As
mentioned earlier, the value of this collaboration lies in the effective integration of VicOne’s security
solutions with NXP’s state-of-the-art technology and the AWS IoT FleetWise service. All of these are preintegrated in Inventec’s CGW.
This collaboration highlights four major advantages:•Built-in security aligns strongly with compliance requirements such as the ISO/SAE 21434 cybersecurity
standard, which advocates ensuring security in the entire vehicle life cycle.

•A turnkey and embedded solution creates a one-stop-shop solution amid the complexity of the entirevehicle ecosystem.

•The integration of VicOne solutions with the NXP S32G processor improves overall compatibility andperformance.

•This four-way collaboration creates a shorter design flow leading to a shorter go-to-market strategy,
and also addresses the scalability concern.

Overall, VicOne’s aim is to add value with the integration of cloud service providers and explore avenues
that can further enrich these collaborative efforts. In the process, this allows for the development of moresecure solutions and automotive products, and creates opportunities to better fulfill OEMs and suppliers’
needs.
To learn more about VicOne’s solutions and partnerships, contact our experts and schedule a demo at
automotive@vicone.com.

Learn more about VicOne by visiting www.vicone.com