LIFTT supports with € 400,000 the product development and sales of Driveseca startup that anticipates future trends in mobility security and wireless connectivity. Drivesec was born from the intuition of its CEO Giuseppe Faranda Cordella, an international level manager with a significant track record at FCA and specific expertise in component product development, automotive aftermarket and Internet of Things, who in 2017 set up the startup focused on the topic of connectivity technologies that need digital security. A vast and unexplored area, if only we think of the proliferation of wireless connections that make the tools and computing devices present everywhere in our homes, as well as in our garages, very vulnerable to digital attacks: modern cars are to all intents and purposes computers with wheels, and even more so are electric vehicles and self-driving cars.
The consequence of the increased availability of connectivity is that cyber attacks on cars over the last five years have seen exponential growth. As of early December 2020, about 600 cyber damages against cars have been recorded, and the famous case of the demonstration cyber attack conducted in the United States on a Jeep Compassnow dates back to 2015. Two hackers remotely managed to take control of the car while it was on the highway, and ran it off the road. It was a conscious experiment, but it showed how a person with sufficient skills can take control of any car at any time.
The need to verify the level of protection of vehicles and security systems will lead to avery important expansion of the market for testing security requirements:theEU is defining a special "sticker" that will certify the cyber reliability of the IoT device, whether it is a drone, a voice assistance system, the light meter or the electronic components of a car. Automotive certification will become mandatory starting in 2022.
The strength of Drivesec's technology is its ability to adapt the validation model for automotive and Internet of Things products.Today, safety testing is done at the end of the product development process, before being put on the market. The model designed by Drivesec supports the ISO 21434 standard and makes safety requirement assessments more flexible by providing a platform that, thanks to a remote device, connects to the car's electronics and allows access to the ECUs. This allows for earlier validation times, reducing the cost and time to market of security feature implementation, and developing important economies of scale..
The market is growing rapidly: a McKinsey report estimates that it will reach a volume of around 10 billion dollars by 2030, while it is already around 5 billion today. Within this market, Drivesec is in the segment most closely tied to regulatory compliance, with peak growth expected as early as 2025.
For LIFTT this is the twelfth investment in just over a year of operation and the second in the world of mobility after Electra Vehicles. It is a choice that was born thanks to the indications of CEIP, the Foreign Center for Internationalization of Piedmont and the Business Analysis team of LIFTT that identified a trend with high potential in the mobility of the future and in the connection, and in the related security issues that arise. LIFTT's Project Management team will now follow Drivesec's growth path, in close partnership with the team led by Giuseppe Faranda Cordella. LIFTT's funding will be used to develop the "testing" platform, which includes several steps between 2021 and 2022 to go from prototype to product, and to begin the development of the commercial part. It is interesting to note that Drivesec already has a significant portfolio of customers and has developed an important partnership with TUV Sud on the certification bodies front.
Great satisfaction expressed by Giuseppe Faranda Cordella: "When we decided to look for an investment support we saw different realities and we liked LIFTT because it is an investor who has a different approach than the others both from the point of view of ethical and relational inclination: we were struck by the interest in enhancing the product and the skills of our team, which has decades of experience in the automotive world."
Words echoed by Guido Panizza, , Head of Project Management at LIFTT: "In the information technology sector, market analysis shows a strong increase in demand for validation services, but also shows the non-existence of automatic tools, and this is the strength of the Drivesec proposal: to bring to market a disruptive testing model that positions it as a first mover with high potential that LIFTT will explore in all possible ways".
"For LIFTT - concludes CEO Giovanni Tesoriere - this is the 12th investment in just over a year, many of which have been spent in a challenging economic environment that, however, has only accelerated scenarios that confirm the validity of our insights and our modus operandi. This operation in particular identifies a context of regulatory opportunity that is rare to find nowadays: in fact, it operates on a market demand driven by a regulation that is a very strong driver for the growth of the market itself."
(Source: Liftt)
