Like clockwork, CES starts tomorrow and marks the beginning of our annual technology cycle. This is the opportunity to look back at what’s been a big year for Karamba, and imagine what’s coming.
As a start, CES 2019 itself was huge, with major presence on the floor for the first time and almost 300 meetings.
Later that month, Karamba won SC Magazine’s annual innovator award in the Access Control category; that turned out to be just one of a series of awards we won during 2019, including a 3rd TU Automotive honor, and SINET Top 16 for cybersecurity innovation.
This last award is related to the major shift in our Go To Market strategy in May this year, when we decided officially to expand our addressable market with connected devices outside of Automotive – including Consumer IoT, Industry 4.0/IIoT, and Enterprise Edge cybersecurity. Becoming an embedded cybersecurity player enhanced our market visibility, introduced new sales motions and increased our pipeline in a very short cycle. The product was ready, following the “bootcamp” in Automotive for three years; at that point it was a matter of bringing it to other industries as well.
Within six months, we signed four production agreements, including our first public production agreement which we announced with Alpine Electronics in July.
Our industry partnerships also continued to expand, and we entered new collaborations with industry-leading OS providers including Wind River (VxWorks), Vector, and SYSGO.
But it wasn’t only a big year for Karamba: Throughout the world of cybersecurity, there were major developments that will affect the world of embedded security in the years to come. Mainly, we see heightened awareness about cyber risks not only among manufacturers and regulatory bodies, but with consumers as well.
In early July, a who’s who of automotive industry leaders – including Audi, BMW, Daimler, FCA, and Volkswagen – published a set of safety and security guidelines for autonomous vehicles, which described the need for strong security controls, including Control Flow Integrity. Also in July, the US Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published a report that stated that IoT devices present especially-difficult security challenges, with no equivalent in conventional IT.
To help us all keep up with the industry, Karamba initiated a weekly newsletter covering all the developments in Product Security, a new sub-segment of the security industry that focuses on the embedded world, and on the role of security not in the context of IT operations but as part of enterprise product manufacturing.
One such news item was listed in December, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned about the dangers posed by IoT hacking, in a statement that came only a month after a previous warning issued by the Bureau about smart TVs. Legislation is coming in 2020, and California has signed legislation that mandates that manufacturers equip connected devices with “reasonable security features.”
We can also expect that new security standards, like ISO/SAE 21434 due in 2020, will have a watershed effect on cybersecurity for connected vehicles in 2020 – and in the years to come.
So, what do we see looking forward? In 2019 we started to see major changes in industry and consumer awareness about cyber threats to connected devices. Following the demand, by consumers and regulatory bodies, that manufacturers build security into their products before they ever leave the factory, Karamba saw much shorter sales cycles and scale production year ahead.
2019 was a milestone year for Karamba Security. With our technology, sales channels and marketing organization mature we are perfectly positioned to support the growing need for embedded endpoint protection. Here’s to even bigger (and better) 2020.
Happy New Year and enjoy CES2020!
We are in the North Hall at booth #5931. Visit us to see an innovative portfolio for 2020.
