As car racing safety shifts into high gear, Ferrari teams up with Bitdefender

IMOLA, Italy – Formula 1 racing once revolved around speed, nothing else.

There Was Always Drama And Politics On The Racing Circuit — Now It’s Part Of The Binge netflix series drive to survive — but at its heart, Formula 1 teams focused solely on engineering feats that resulted in the best and fastest cars to win race after race.

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As technologies developed throughout the decades, racing car designs followed suit. F1 has become a hotbed of innovation, aided by the millions of dollars poured into research efforts each year. Gone were the clunky, cumbersome motors replaced with aerodynamic, sleek cars and components designed to achieve performance gains within a tenth of a second.

Hello Barrier, called by Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu saved his life During the crash of 2022, one of Formula 1’s latest promotion Intended to prevent large objects from entering the cockpit.

However, safety is no longer just about cars and drivers. Formula 1 teams and their parent organizations also now have to secure themselves against cyber attacks.

It’s easy to forget that sports teams face the same hazards as companies in other sectors and industries. Ransomware, blackmail, theft of intellectual property, compromise of customer, employee, or investor data, insiders willing to work for competitors – the list of threats and attack vectors is endless.

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There’s a fortune at play for points in each race, and these teams are financial powerhouses. really, some are worth over a billion dollarsThereby making them an attractive target for today’s cyber criminals.

While there have been previous security incidents, such as the alleged espionageA recent ransomware attack has highlighted how threat actors are taking a serious interest in Formula 1.

Ferrari, known for its cars, fashion and the Scuderia Ferrari F1 team, said in march that its wholly owned Italian subsidiary, Ferrari SpA, suffered a data breach in which attackers “were able to access a limited number of systems within its IT environment.”

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had names, addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers exposed, However, the company believes that financial data was not included.

This was followed by a ransom demand from Ferrari.

“As a policy, Ferrari will not be held to ransom because the payment of such demands constitutes criminal activity and enables threat actors to conduct their attacks,” the company said.

Experiencing and recovering from a cyber attack is often challenging and traumatic. By the sound of it, it could have been worse — but it is necessary to reduce the risk of future security incidents.

Last week, cybersecurity firm Bitdefender and Ferrari announced extended partnership Going beyond Scuderia Ferrari – Bitdefender sponsorship deal signed 2022,

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Ferrari SPA will integrate Bitdefender Advanced Threat Intelligence into its Security Operations Center (SOC) and strengthen Ferrari’s existing security team by providing threat data and intelligence to triage suspicious activity and boost incident response.

At a press event announcing the partnership, Luca Piero, head of cyber security at Ferrari, noted that the question is not If rather an organization is attacked When – and this includes “not only Ferrari, but also other companies with strong brands and important reputations.”

“This is our mantra,” said Piero. “Be prepared to manage an adverse event.”

Ferrari security analysts will be able to access the Bitdefender Operational Intelligence API, a query service for cyber threats, and relevant data such as malware families, known threat actors and victim profiles. According to Piero, these features will strengthen Ferrari’s safety posture and create “a shield for the company”.

While Piero says phishing and human factors are the most frequent, first-stage attack vectors Ferrari encounters — with lateral movement a secondary concern — such a partnership reduces the overall attack surface, a threat to modern-day threats. A significant improvement to deal with.

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“In the past, we dealt with single individuals,” Piero said. “Now we deal with proper criminal organizations. It’s a game changer.”

According to Ferrari’s chief digital and data officer, Silvia Gabrieli, it is a matter of “managing” rather than solving cyber security challenges. Assets including math, technical details of cars, customer data, and employee records must all be protected – but there’s no point in protecting intellectual property crown jewels unless the weakest link is sorted out first.

Responding quickly to modern threats is becoming as important as the speed of the cars the company is famous for — and just as important is keeping pace with the evolution of cyber attacks.

Speaking of the expanded partnership, Bitdefender chief executive and co-founder Florin Talps said attack scenarios must be considered, along with “listening to the pain and needs” of customers.

“‘We are safe’ does not exist,” Talps said. “Technology is constantly evolving, (and it) changes what you need to protect.”

Disclaimer: Charlie Osborne travels to Imola as a guest of Bitdefender.