We heard at CES last week how Harman is expanding its Over-the-Air (OTA) offering to allow OEMs to effectively tackle the ever-growing security complexity of their software supply chain’s components. We also learned how its smart, secure technology is advancing personalised mobility that satisfies individual preferences. Continuing just-auto/QUBE series of interviews, we spoke to Oren Betzaleli, Senior Vice President & General Manager, Connected Services, Harman.
Looking around CES, it increasingly appears that everything in the car is connected to everything outside it. Yet ensuring all these connectivity functions securely is a primary consideration. Harman points out that its Ignite Automotive cloud platform works with both entry-level and premium offerings to manage multiple in-vehicle solutions, from vehicle diagnostics to cloud-based driver profiles, all under one control unit that can be updated over-the-air using its Remote Vehicle Updating Service (OTA). This also enables connected ADAS applications and features, as well as IoT functionality to provide capabilities such as route alerts and guidance via calendar integration and integration with home control systems such as SmartThings. Harman Shield – an intrusion detection and prevention solution (IDPS) – functions as the car’s security system, capable of detecting, managing, mitigating and responding to cyber-attacks on connected and autonomous vehicles.
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Harman’s Ignite 3.0 features a new vehicle-centric marketplace, a virtual personal assistant that integrates with the vehicle and other VPAs and connected navigation with POI search. In addition, Ignite 3.0 introduces Software Supply Chain Protection, allowing OEMs to identify, assess and mitigate the security threats across entire fleets of vehicles and institute corrective actions whenever needed through OTA.
Looking around the CES this week, it seems like almost everything is now connected to everything else including the cars. What is your vision of the connected car?
One of the things that I have been focusing on in the last four years is everything to do with over-the-air updates. If you look at this feature of updating automotive software remotely and if I look at our customers three years ago, most of them were doing over-the-air updates via a smartphone. So the assumption was that not every car was connected. So if you want to update it then you needed to bring the connectivity unit with you. That is the first point. Two years later, that has all gone. Most of our customers today have embedded connectivity. And once you have embedded connectivity then there is so much you can do. Over the air software updates is one example. Connecting to the cloud for the sake of analytics and big data is another example. So there is so much that can still happen because connectivity is an infrastructure. It is the plumbing. Once you have this plumbing, there is so much more that you can do. We have just announced our Ignite 3.0 which is a new generation of our cloud platform that provides capabilities like app store and a marketplace for services and applications. It provides capabilities like big data analytics and things around the virtual assistance. Again, once you have the connectivity in the cloud than the number of services, applications and interfaces that you see coming into the car is endless.
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Do the number of opportunities in connectivity present a challenge to you in terms of deciding where to put your money and develop further applications what?
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By GlobalDataI don’t think it presents a challenge but it presents an opportunity. And I will tell you what I mean. First of all, it presents an opportunity for us to talk to our customers and see what they are interested in. From an investment point of view, what we are investing in are the enablers. So we are investing in over-the-air update capabilities, we are investing in cyber security so that we can prevent hacks. We do not know what the future experiences will be as the market will decide. But what we do know is that whatever service it will be, there will need to be an infrastructure enabling it. We can also start to create an ecosystem of this kind of services and capabilities and, together with our customers, explore what works and what doesn’t work. In the past, when car makers would create a car, they would design it, manufacture and sell it but after that they cannot do anything. They have sold it. Today, they sold it and two months later they can change it. They can change software, services, applications and configuration. Everything that is not made of metal and rubber can be changed. We are calling it an opportunity to work with our customers to understand what they need, to understand what the drivers need and also to keep changing, to be flexible, reactive and proactive which was not very common in the car industry up until a few years ago.
Yet one thing that is common and constant is hacking. How is Harman addressing this security risk through your various different levels?
You rightfully mention levels because cybersecurity is not just one thing. It is multiple things. When we develop software within Harman, we use practices that are available in the industry for making sure that the software that we develop is, I would say, ‘proof’. It is never proof but at least there is a process and practice that is safer than others. That’s where it starts. On top of that, during the development, there are a variety of tools and utilities that can help you do that. Things like the scanning of codes, working with a database of vulnerabilities and looking at what can happen ahead of time, testing, validation, verification and so on. That is where it starts. It continues with securing the transportation layer so things like key management system, encryption, TLS so protecting the transportation layer. We bought a company called Towersec, who are experts in intrusion detection. Once they detect an issue then they send it to the cloud for analysis … and fixed within hours without doing a vehicle recall.
So there are multiple layers that we employ. But do I think that we will ever be 100 per cent safe? Of course not. There is no such thing. The hackers will make one step forward and we will make two steps forward. So it is an ongoing investment it is an ongoing process.
How does Ignite 3.0 leverage Artificial Intelligence?
The main connection between Ignite 3.0 and artificial intelligence has to do with virtual assistance. So today everybody is introducing voice services in a car. One thing that we were able to do is leveraged artificial intelligence so that the connectivity between the car and the specific voice assistant agent is done in a way that we know exactly what you’re trying to do and then address you to the right engine. So, for example, if you ask a question and we know from the specific situation of the car so we can this information and your question and combine it to provide you with the right virtual assistance then you get the right answer. So this is where implemented artificial intelligence the most in the context of Ignite.
Does Ignite 3.0 present more opportunities for e-commerce in the vehicle?
One of the main components and Ignite 3.0 is the marketplace for services and applications. And the ability to monetise them and enable more and more e-commerce opportunities for the carmakers.
So more possibilities such as enabling the driver use contactless pay at a gas station?
Payment is just another service. If you want to plug in your Samsung Pay into the platform then it can do this. We do not invest so much in the specific services but we invest in the infrastructure and create an ecosystem of services. So we can offer five different payment services to offer pay with PayPal, Samsung or Google Wallet. Whichever one will be the one that the marketplace will prefer, we will be able to connect it and bolt it onto the platform to enable the carmakers to leverage it. That is our philosophy. We do not have to reinvent a new payment mechanism. This is not our business.
Is it a challenge to attract the right level of talent to develop the software?
It is always a challenge to attract new employees. Always. I don’t think that money is the number one thing. Because at the end of the day everybody is paying more or less the same thing. In Israel, we have a pool of talent. And automotive tech is considered one of the most interesting areas. Everybody wants to work in automotive. I just heard a statistic that in Silicon Valley, 60 per cent of investments went to startups around automotive in the last year or so. In Israel alone, we have so many startups that are working around automotive. Harman is a huge player in automotive. So that makes it, I won’t say ‘easy’ for us, but we definitely have the ability to reach the talents available. It is a challenge. We are investing a lot in that. We are doing a lot of PR work in Israel to tell the world to tell the target population what Harman is and what are we doing. So it is a challenge but we have ways to work around that.
