Securing the Future of Automotive Manufacturing: A Zero Trust Approach

As auto manufacturers transition toward a world of electric vehicles, they are shuffling profits from gasoline-powered vehicles into research and development for EVs. This research generates new digital crown jewels—critical data that must be protected.

The question is: knowing that the threat landscape is only becoming more complicated amid the significant R&D expenditures of the EV revolution, how can auto manufacturers effectively manage risk and security while ensuring profitability?

In this series, we will explore how automakers can protect their digital crown jewels and more effectively manage cyber risk in their organizations. We’ll look closely at how to strengthen security posture, reduce environmental complexity, and realize faster time to value with Zscaler solutions.

The cost of downtime

Industry studies often estimate that automakers lose anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 per minute during unexpected line stoppages. This includes the costs of lost production, idle labor, wasted materials, repair time, and downstream supply chain disruptions. If you account for contract penalties and potential loss of reputation, those figures can go much higher. 

For perspective, this translates to upwards of $300,000 to $3 million per hour in losses for automakers, depending on the situation and the severity of the systems impacted.

In 2019, a six-week strike that shut down GM plants cost the company approximately $100 million per day in lost profits and production. In past line stoppages, Tesla missed production targets by thousands of vehicles, with disappointing quarterly earnings results linked directly to downtime. In 2022, production interruptions due to semiconductor shortages cost Ford around $600 million in quarterly earnings.

The time to recover from a ransomware attack for an automaker is generally measured in weeks to months for technical recovery, and months to years for full operational, reputational, and legal recovery. The recovery timeline can vary widely depending on factors such as the severity of the attack, the company's preparation and response protocols, the extent of systems compromised, whether backups are available, and whether the ransom is paid and data and/or systems can be recovered.

In 2020, a ransomware attack shut down Honda’s global production temporarily, forcing several plants to halt operations for a few days. While some operations resumed within days, restoring all systems and addressing the underlying vulnerabilities likely took weeks or longer.

In 2019, a Toyota parts supplier faced a cyberattack that disrupted assembly for several days, causing cascading effects on Toyota’s production lines. Recovery from such supply chain-affecting ransomware incidents often takes weeks, as both upstream and downstream partners are affected.

How can Zscaler help?

It’s rare to find an offering that offers better user experiences, improved security posture, and reduced costs at the same time. Zscaler delivers just that.

Zscaler offers several solutions for automakers to reduce the attack surface, minimize the blast radius of attacks, and realize faster time to value—all without a heavy investment in new equipment or extensive downtime to implement it.

Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) reduces the attack surface by providing zero trust network access (ZTNA), ensuring that users only connect to specific applications they are authorized to access without exposing the network to potential threats. Unlike traditional approaches that rely on VPNs, ZPA eliminates the need to place users on the corporate network, which prevents lateral movement by attackers. Applications are hidden behind the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, making them invisible to unauthorized users and reducing the risk of exploitation. By dynamically establishing secure, direct connections between users and applications, ZPA minimizes exposure points and ensures a more resilient security posture.

Zscaler Privileged Remote Access (PRA) provides third-party contractors with secure, zero trust access to specific automaker resources without requiring traditional VPNs. With its identity-based access control, contractors are granted least-privileged access to only the applications and systems they need—without exposing the entire network. This prevents lateral movement and reduces the attack surface. Because Zscaler leverages encrypted, direct connectivity instead of network-level access, sensitive resources remain hidden from unauthorized users, and activities are monitored to ensure compliance and security.

Zscaler Zero Trust Device Segmentation minimizes the blast radius by enabling organizations to implement logical separation between environments, such as production, development, and third-party access, without relying on traditional network segmentation. By leveraging agentless device segmentation, Zscaler Zero Trust Device Segmentation ensures that communication across environments is tightly controlled and limited to authorized users and workloads. This prevents lateral movement by isolating potential compromises within a single environment, dramatically reducing the scope and impact of breaches. With granular access policies and application-specific connectivity, Zscaler Zero Trust Device Segmentation ensures that a security incident in one environment does not spill over into others, thereby containing threats and safeguarding critical systems. 

Zscaler Zero Trust SD-WAN enables operational technology (OT) devices to securely communicate by providing a zero trust-based connectivity solution that eliminates the need for traditional VPNs or complex network configurations. It securely connects OT devices at factories or remote sites directly to applications and resources they need, whether within the automaker's data centers, private instances of public clouds, or SaaS environment, without exposing the devices to the public internet or creating unnecessary lateral movement risks. By segmenting and enforcing identity-based access policies, Zero Trust SD-WAN ensures that communication is encrypted, authorized, and isolated, enabling secure and seamless interactions across OT and IT environments while protecting critical infrastructure from cyberthreats.

Conclusion

As the automotive industry shifts toward a future driven by electric vehicles, automakers are navigating a dual challenge: allocating significant resources to R&D while addressing an increasingly complex technological landscape that needs to be secured. The stakes are exceptionally high as downtime caused by cyberattacks like ransomware can be catastrophic, stalling production, disrupting supply chains, and leading to multimillion-dollar losses.  

Zscaler provides automakers with the tools to not only protect their operations, but also cost-effectively simplify and modernize their environments. By leveraging Zscaler zero trust security solutions, automakers can more effectively manage risk in their organizations. Zscaler enables them to reduce the attack surface, prevent lateral movement, and minimize the blast radius of potential threats. These solutions offer a fast time to value, ensuring stronger security without disrupting ongoing operations or straining existing resources.  

In an era of rising cyberthreats and evolving production demands, automakers need a security framework that aligns with their vision of innovation and resiliency. Zscaler empowers them to protect critical systems, optimize their operations, and maintain profitability—securing not only their factories and data, but also the future of mobility.