ITK Engineering and Excelfore Team Up on Safe and Secure FOTA/SOTA Solutions for Connected Vehicles
Safety and Cyber Security from Backend into Vehicle
ITK Engineering and Excelfore announced their partnership to provide integrated FOTA/SOTA solutions with fully comprehensive vehicle safety and cyber security for the automotive market. The integration of Excelfore’s over-the-air technology eSync™ with ITK Engineering’s expert knowledge, in particular on embedded and cyber security as well as safety in the automotive sector enables balance between functional safety and protection from cyber-attacks. Thus appropriate safety and protection levels can be achieved for vehicle diagnosis and firmware updates over-the-air. Combined with ITK’s holistic approach to the architectural design of secure embedded systems, functional safety of vehicles can be protected against malicious attacks in a very effective way.
Secure cloud solution, embedded competence and safety & cyber security from a single source
“Safety and cyber security are key aspects of connected cars that will shape the automotive industry in the coming years. To ensure functional safety in connected or even autonomous cars it is absolutely necessary to integrate a close and comprehensive security concept”, said Matthias Gemmar, ITK’s Head of Strategy.
Excelfore eSync™, which is based on patented technologies, provides an end-to-end cloud solution for delivering software over the air (SOTA) and firmware over the air (FOTA) updates and enables full vehicle over-the-air update of all vehicle components including gateway, headunit, Electronic Control Units (ECU) and telematics units. Excelfore leverages its patented M2M distributed architecture to support cloud-to-vehicle connectivity and multiple in-vehicle networks including LIN, CAN, FlexRay and Ethernet.
ITK complements this solution by its expertise in automotive ECU development, safety and cyber security engineering as well as system integration and verification & validation. To protect vehicles against cyber-attacks all critical elements of the FOTA and SOTA delivery chain – embedded systems, communication protocols, apps, IT services – are subjected to a rigorous design process. This methodology ensures the ideal synchronization between safety and cyber security engineering processes for all development phases, from concept to validation, and results in the most appropriate system architecture for each application.
Comprehensive FOTA solution by bundling competences
By combining the strengths of ITK Engineering and Excelfore, automotive OEMs and suppliers receive a complete FOTA solution including backend, onboard client, connectivity unit and its integration as well as system architecture design and integrated safety and cyber security from a single source. “The Excelfore eSync platform with its advanced security and scalability will help to accelerate adoption of innovative solutions for the automotive industry”, said Gemmar.
Shrinath Acharya, CEO of Excelfore, added, “The expert domain knowledge, consulting services and engineering portfolio of ITK extend the security umbrella of eSync further into the automotive network. By partnering with ITK Engineering we will enable a shorter time to market for OEMs, alleviating security risks threatening vehicle safety.”
Furthermore ITK Engineering is developing customized safe and secure remote maintenance solution for complex and safety critical embedded systems in various industries.
About Excelfore
Excelfore Corporation, located in Silicon Valley, is driving the next generation of connected car platforms. Excelfore products include eMatics (Automated Fleet Service Scheduling solution), eSync (Software Over the Air Updater (SOTA) Solutions), and the Cloud Data Analytics as a part of its eCloud Services Platform.
For more information, visit www.excelfore.com.
About ITK Engineering AG
ITK Engineering AG was established in 1994 as “Ingenieurbüro für technische Kybernetik” and is an internationally operating technology company with customers in the automotive and aerospace industries as well as in medical technology. In addition to tailored technical consulting and development services, the company offers turn-key systems in the fields of software engineering, embedded systems, model-based design and testing as well as control systems design and signal processing. As a premium partner in the AUTOSAR Consortium, ITK Engineering is involved in the development of an open and standardized software architecture for the automotive industry, specializing in safety and cyber security. With a staff of over 850 employees, ITK is headquartered in Rülzheim (Palatinate) and has eight branch offices in Germany. In addition, ITK is represented in the USA, in Japan, Spain and Austria.
For more information, visit www.itk-engineering.de/en/home.
