Thank you! Our on-demand webinar: Cyber Defense for the Service-Oriented Vehicle is now ready for viewing below:

Want to learn more about GuardKnox's patented Service-Oriented Architecture solution?

Read this comprehensive whitepaper to learn more: 

At the end of the webinar, we had some time dedicated to a Q&A session. There were so many great questions we just couldn't get to them all in the time we had! Continue reading below to see answers to some unanswered questions.

Unanswered Question 1: What does VAS stand for?

Value Added Services – This allows OEMs to offer temporary upgrades / downloads for personalization and customization – creating new markets and revenue generating opportunities for the automotive industry. We have coined this term "Drivers to Subscribers." Read more here.

Unanswered Question 2: How is the OTA (over the air) updates process managed?

OTA updates are handled as an additional service running in a management partition. The management partition can download apps from external sources, verify/decrypt them and deploy them in the relevant partition. Alternatively, pre-existing apps can be activated or deactivated by the management partition. This is an integral part of the SOA management mechanism.

GuardKnox and Palo Alto Networks have partnered to form a joint end-to-end cybersecurity solution. By using Palo Alto Network’s expertise in network and cloud security with GuardKnox’s expertise in automotive security and innovative technology, OEM vendors can secure OTA communications between the vehicle, the cloud and their operation centers (SOCs).

This joint solution also facilitates fleet management operations and data transfer from the vehicle over the cloud to fleet operational centers.

Unanswered Question 3: How do you see the lifetime of a vehicle changing through the continued development of new vehicle technology both software and hardware? Could the cars of the future become unusable after a short time?

This is a tough question to answer simply because the automotive industry is still maturing, we haven’t hit full mass-scale autonomy and there are a plethora of unknown variables acting in this equation – from insurance to accidents to machine learning mimicking human driver behavior.

This can be a grim scenario for the automotive industry. GuardKnox believes that ECU and vehicle architectures need to adapt and evolve to the point where change is a constant and frequent part of the system life cycle. This requires different approaches to ECU design.

This is why GuardKnox utilizes not only a flexible software architecture, but also a flexible hardware architecture. This allows the hardware to keep up with the changing software requirements. This isolation and SOA environment allows for rapid and safe deployment of new application during vehicle operation without the risk of impacting other apps or safety critical systems. Thus, as we mature such architectures, the vehicles of the future will provide a quantum leap in usability without compromising reliability or lifetime.