Why Automotive Resilience Must Go Beyond Data Protection
By Lorri Janssen-Anessi, BlueVoyant Director of External Cyber Assessments
The automotive sector has special resilience needs, given the large number of suppliers and vendors required to make increasingly advanced vehicles. Recent reported disruptions have spotlighted the issue and show the need for cyber resilience to improve physical resilience. This is especially important now as autumn is one of the peak periods for new car demand.
Convergence of IT and OT
What makes the cyber-attacks on automative makers especially concerning is the dual impact that it can have on both the manufacturing and retail operations – and how both areas can be disrupted simultaneously. This shows how deeply interconnected IT and operational technology (OT) systems have become across modern automotive enterprises.
The automotive industry has made remarkable strides in digitisation. Cloud-based systems drive customer relationship management; advanced analytics optimise supply chains and connected OT environments deliver efficiency on the production floor.
Unfortunately, this interconnectedness can inadvertently create a fragile ecosystem where an attack on one system can cascade into full operational paralysis.
This is a lesson for automotive manufacturers that resilience planning doesn’t stop at data protection. A ransomware infection or intrusion into factory control systems may not steal sensitive information, but it can stop the assembly line cold. This can be every bit as damaging as a breach of intellectual property or customer records.
Change How We View Cyber Security
Too often, cyber security is still treated as an IT line item in a budget or compliance policy rather than a core business risk. Instead, cyber security strategy must be integrated into enterprise risk management frameworks and aligned directly with business continuity planning.
This necessitates thinking of defence in layers. Preventive measures are mandatory and must include non-negotiable elements such as access controls, multi-factor authentication, and network segmentation. Defenses must also include continuous monitoring across IT and OT environments, and most importantly, rapid incident detection response using tried-and-tested strategies.
Automotive manufacturers also need to widen the aperture beyond the manufacturer itself and to ensure supply chain security. Automotive production relies on complex, globally distributed supply chains that are increasingly digitised and interdependent. A cyber event at a Tier 1 supplier, logistics provider, or dealership network can ripple across the ecosystem with comparable effect.
Resilience within these ecosystems will require industry-wide collaboration and proactive threat intelligence sharing – and greater visibility of digital supply chains. Coordinated recovery planning must also be agreed with key partners to fully understand and prevent similar events.
Pressing Issues for Automotive
The automotive industry has a huge task on its hands. It needs to re-examine security postures, ensure effective business continuity planning, and validate crisis response playbooks.
Automotive executives should evaluate their preparedness by asking:
How quickly can operations resume if core systems fail?
- Do we have visibility into OT environments, beyond IT infrastructure?
- Are incident response teams trained for scenarios spanning factories, supply chains, and customer systems?
- How do we measure resilience in both data security and operational continuity?
The answers to these questions will distinguish organisations ready for future disruptions from those that are not.
Automotive cyber security can no longer be only about compliance or technical hygiene. It must include protecting the very ability to manufacture and deliver vehicles. Effective attacks need not involve stolen data to cause damage, but when production stops, revenue quickly follows – leading to potential reputational damage and strained customer relations.
Automotive cyber incidents are a wake-up call across automotive, that cyber security is not just an IT task. It is a core business risk that must be managed at the highest levels of leadership. By embedding resilience into every layer of operations and across the supply chain, the industry can safeguard its future against the rising tide of cyber threats.
