LG is preparing for the coming automotive fight: The firm acquires Cybellum, a vehicle cybersecurity business for $240 million. All car manufacturers are concerned about cybersecurity. As a result, by 2022, cars that do not have a cybersecurity certificate will not be permitted to be sold in the European Union. Many vehicle manufacturers’ software is still far from ideal.
The automobile business, which LG Electronics previously abandoned, is now one of the key investments for the South Korean company. It has just made a significant move with the acquisition of Cybellum, an Israeli firm that specializes in connected vehicle cybersecurity.
LG makes a move for the coming battlefield
This deal will help LG acquire valuable technology for its home appliances, televisions, and smartphones. The acquisition is worth $240 million in total, according to LG. It will pay $140 million initially and give another $20 million by the end of the year. In the “near future,” LG will acquire the remaining shares until the announced valuation is reached.
Cybellum is a firm that claims to be able to detect and analyze connected vehicle hardware and services’ vulnerabilities. It does so using a unique “digital twin” technique.
The company’s website explains that the platform enables “under-the-hood” vulnerability mapping. Cybellum scans each vehicle component and generates a digital duplicate to work with. This includes a “complete list of open-source, proprietary and commercial software, operating systems, hardware architectures and any cryptographic measures that vendors may have used.”
Cybellum was established in 2016 and has about 50 workers. Among the companies that collaborate with us are Land Rover, Nissan, Harman, and Renault.
This is LG’s first investment in the Israeli ecosystem, with the intention of “securing growth in the automotive industry and offering more value in areas such as design, operations development, and software optimization and security”. In an equivalent direction, LG was buying ZKW Group in 2018 and this summer partnered with Magna for the creation of electric platforms for electric cars.
According to The Korea Times, it was to be precisely the collaboration between LG and Magna that would be responsible for the rumored Apple Car.
The cybersecurity company will maintain its independence for the time being and will continue to collaborate with the other manufacturers, according to Slava Bronfman, founder of Cybellum, as explained to TechCrunch. It will do so under the umbrella of LG Electronics, which has decided to make a move and invest a significant amount of money in one of the topics that will foreseeably be repeated the most in the automotive field in the coming years.
