Mercedes-Benz and 360 Group to join forces: Mercedes-Benz and 360 Group with its Cyber Security Brain work together to strengthen car IT security for industry

Beijing/Stuttgart.  As a premium automotive manufacturer, Mercedes-Benz plays a leading role in the digitalization of mobility. To strengthen and ensure trustful protection of our customer data and safety, information security is a fundamental strategic pillar. Security is being implemented by design to support the digital change in the whole organization.

The worldwide Mercedes-Benz community creates and nourishes a mindset which is the foundation for how the company understands, develops and lives cybersecurity. Additionally, it is essential to leverage the power and skills of the security community. Why? Because it is the goal of Mercedes-Benz to offer its customers secure products and secure connected services. Therefore, the company values the work of security researchers and white-hat hackers who spend time and effort helping Mercedes-Benz to achieve this goal. Their work supports to provide security that meets the speed and the needs to enable innovation. To show how much the automotive manufacturer values these researches and efforts, Mercedes-Benz is planning to introduce a Bug Bounty program with special emphasis on security to help and encourage the research community to assist Mercedes-Benz in improving connected services.

Sky-Go Team is a car security research team from 360 Group and part of 360 Cyber Security Brain. 360 Cyber Security Brain, an advanced system that realizes the intelligent upgrade of cyber security defense, includes different kind of security capabilities supported by different security research teams from 360 Group.

Recently, Sky-Go Team and Mercedes-Benz researchers have been working together to fix 19 detected possible vulnerabilities within the Mercedes-Benz connected vehicle. This was possible due to the excellent research by Sky-Go Team. For this most advanced research Mercedes-Benz has decided to give the Sky-Go team of 360 Group an excellence award. Mercedes-Benz and the Sky-Go team of 360 Group are planning to jointly present the detailed findings in one of the upcoming security conferences.

The Sky-Go Team believes: “As a team focused on the research of car IT security, ensuring car security and user safety is the primary goal of our team. We hope to work with car manufacturers to improve the security capabilities of connected cars, protect the interests of users and manufacturers from attacker”, said Minrui Yan, Head of Security Research from Sky-Go Team.

Proactive identification of vulnerabilities is essential to protect the data of our customers and their vehicles. “At Mercedes-Benz we value the expertise of the security community”, said Adi Ofek, CEO of Mercedes-Benz Tel Aviv and holding the mandate for car IT security at Mercedes-Benz. “Therefore, we highly appreciate the knowledge of the Sky-Go team, and the outstanding ability of 360 Cyber Security Brain. Their efforts and passion are a significant contribution to help further secure our vehicles.”

Zhou Hongyi, Chairman and CEO of 360 Group: “This research outcome is a significant application of 360 cyber security brain in the field of vehicle security. In the future, we hope to provide the automotive industry with more comprehensive information security expertise and solutions, to ensure the security of connected vehicles in the era of internet of everything and benefit more car manufacturers and customers.”

The era of networked mobility puts higher demands and greater challenges for information security. Therefore Mercedes-Benz appreciates its relationship to 360 Group, that has started already in 2017. Both companies hope to continue and deepen their cooperation in the future, in order to further improve the security for connected vehicles and the community.