BUSINESS

O

ne of the companies using 
the WeWork space on 
Clifford Street in Detroit is 
an Israeli startup that may be pro-
tecting your car from cyber-attacks.
Yoav Levy had worked for several 
startup companies and the executives 
that purchased them before found-
ing Upstream Security in 2017 with 
Yonatan Appel, the company’s chief 
technology officer.
“We had been looking at the IoT 
[internet of things] world for a long 
time,
” said Levy, who serves as the 
company’s CEO. “We were looking 
for the segment that, on one hand, 
was growing the most, and, on the 
other hand, had a complicated prob-
lem to solve with a real need.
“Today’s vehicles are connected 
to the internet and can be updated 
over the air. All sorts of apps and 
services rely on that connectivity. 
We help identify and protect against 
cyber attacks and threats very early, 
before the attackers can get into the 
vehicles, and from there, the entire 
vehicle fleet. We work mostly with 
chief security officers of automakers 
to protect their products.
”
A United Nations Economic 
Commission for Europe regulation 
from last year requires automakers 
to use a cyber-security monitoring 
solution to “detect and respond to 
possible cyber security attacks” on all 

of their connected cars.

PREVENTING VEHICLE 
HACKING
“
A very large portion of vehicle thefts 
today is made with cyber tools,
” Levy 
said. 
“Today’s vehicles are computers on 
wheels,
” he added. “They have wire-
less connectivity with Bluetooth or a 
SIM card. We help recognize vulner-
abilities and anomalies that indicate 
that someone is trying to hack the 
vehicle. It can be for taking control of 
it, stealing data from it or stealing the 
vehicle itself.
”
He gives this scenario: “If the car 
key is in a living room and the car 
itself is in the garage, they take a 
repeater and a transceiver, receive the 
key’s signal and transmit it to the car 
to make it think that the key is near 
it, or they hack the connectivity and 
simulate a key near the vehicle.
”
The company’s technological 
approach has made it stand out from 
the competition. “The other compa-
nies took the approach of installing 
a component inside the vehicle,
” 
Levy said. “We’ve built a cloud solu-
tion that can protect vehicles from 
remote attacks, which are high-scale. 
Someone from China, Russia or 
North Korea can attack vehicles in 
the U.S., for example.
”
The cloud-based approach has also 

Israeli startup Upstream 
sets up shop in Motown.

Vehicle 
Cyber-
Security

AMIR SHOAM CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Yoav Levy and Yonatan Appel

Upstream’s headquarters 
in Herzliya

UPSTREAM

52 | DECEMBER 9 • 2021 

