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