Toyota steps up drive to shut out intruders

Car manufacturer uses intrusion prevention to protect network

Toyota Motor Europe is expanding an IT security project to block computer hackers and viruses from its network.

The car manufacturer has stopped an average of 100,000 virus attacks a month using intrusion prevention systems (IPS) from 3Com subsidiary Tipping-Point, and now plans to extend the technology further across its infrastructure.

TippingPoint’s IPS technology has already protected 55,000 Toyota employees in Europe from 15,000 pieces of spyware downloading onto corporate networks each month.

Toyota plans to extend the system’s use from internet and extranet connections to the core of its network.

‘We are putting it in the head office buildings and between clients and servers,’ said Richard Cross, information security officer at Toyota Motor Europe.

‘If a worm breaks out in our network environment then this is a cleverer way of targeting it, rather than just putting in more firewalls.’

The IPS technology will also safeguard against intrusions in Toyota’s electronic supply chain and protect business systems from denial of service attacks, worms, trojans and viruses.

Some seven factories, 29 distributors and all Toyota’s retail outlets will be protected by the new security systems.

Devices will be placed at key points across Toyota’s local and wide area networks, to intercept and analyse all traffic in microseconds, quarantining malicious code and suspect traffic.

‘If spyware was to get through to the desktop then that would be tremendously threatening. It is a colossal issue for the organisation,’ said Cross.

But the fast processing speeds of the technology mean that important business critical information will not be delayed by the network packet inspections.

Toyota operates 24/7 car production plants that make ‘just-in-time’ requests to suppliers for vehicle parts and other materials via electronic communications. It is therefore vital that IT systems are not brought down by malicious attacks.

‘We have two key risks: loss of intellectual property, and business availability,’ said Cross. ‘Our factories operate with less than four hours’ of inventory. If we fail then it could shut down the whole production line.’

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