How does McLaren win the race on both the racetrack and in cyberspace? With innovation and artificial intelligence

This article was translated from our Spanish edition using AI technologies. Errors can occur because of this process. The opinions of entrepreneurs’ contributors are their own.

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Innovation is essential for success. With the Mexican Grand Prix approaching on November 7th, these innovations will be the focus of attention, highlighting some of the most incredible engineering achievements: Formula 1 (F1). The fastest team depends largely on your ability to innovate to win the race.

For the McLaren F1 Team, that means perfecting the car to stay one step ahead of the competition. McLaren creates a new part for its car every 17 minutes. And by the end of the season, 80% of the car will be completely different. With more than 180 Grand Prix wins and 20 championships, this strategy has served the historic McLaren team well.

But innovation is also crucial in cyberspace to win the race. To defeat cyber attackers, organizations must invest in technology that prioritizes research and development and deploy technology to combat the growing number of increasingly sophisticated threats.

Protection of the McLaren Crown Jewels

The constant evolution of the car makes McLaren’s intellectual property – that is, the car’s design and performance – its most valuable gem. Just as a startup’s business model or product design is of vital importance to any entrepreneur, McLaren’s proprietary data is its most valuable resource.

Both entrepreneurs and corporations need to take the necessary precautions so that criminals cannot steal your ideas. Hackers are not interested in legal frameworks or patents. They will do whatever it takes to cause harm.

A successful cyber attack can cause serious problems for any business. These attacks can lead to a loss of reputation, substantial capital losses or the theft of already patented ideas. For McLaren or any other team, the damage a cyberattack would cause – from access to intellectual property to competitive strategy to data from sensors connected to the cars – could be the difference between victory and defeat.

The pace of racing is so fast that F1 teams need technology and innovation to keep up. Adequate cybersecurity measures are critical to protecting intellectual property, keeping equipment working, and most importantly, winning.

Cyber ​​impact on the runway: prevent closure

In addition to data loss, cyberattacks can have physical consequences in the racing world. A successful cyber attack could completely disrupt a company’s activities. Closing any activity for a period of time would not be sustainable.

But for McLaren it is unthinkable not to put the car on the track. A race weekend shutdown attack is the kind of situation that keeps McLaren executives awake at night.

Businesses need to understand that hackers eventually infiltrate. More important than building perimeter protection with legacy technologies like firewalls, organizations must focus on containing the spread of threats and minimizing damage to avoid shutdowns.

Flatten the tires of cyber attackers: stop threats in the blink of an eye

The digital environment of an entrepreneur, such as that of F1, moves at high speed: multiple processes and activities take place at the same time. This is why the use of artificial intelligence (AI) -based solutions is critical to cybersecurity.

The McLaren team uses AI technology to ensure the defense of its digital infrastructure. These artificial intelligence-based cybersecurity solutions automatically warn security teams of threats to their digital infrastructure. These real-time alerts allow security teams to focus their attention on responding to and remediating threats.

Especially on race weekends, it is important that the entire workforce – from the CEO to the team in the pits – does not waste valuable time checking the authenticity of an email or other communication. You have to trust the AI ​​to examine this data for them.

This autonomous responsiveness allows the team to focus on more complex security tasks without having to worry about relying on a single person’s decisions to protect the entire company and its infrastructure. Clicking a suspicious link doesn’t just put one person at risk. The entire company is at risk.

A change in the venue means a change in the digital environment

Cybersecurity based on artificial intelligence (AI) is the best way to secure complex and demanding digital environments, such as a growing startup or a Formula 1 team. Every weekend McLaren is in a different location, on a circuit with different races.

The most successful AI has the ability to learn about the regular business operations of an organization and thereby identify abnormal behavior for that specific environment. In this sense, AI can prevent partial or total business interruption, data theft and other negative effects of a cyber attack. This type of AI, called “self-learning”, can adapt to changes in its environment, which is very common in the case of F1.

McLaren has learned that it is important to adopt this type of technology beforehand. As attacks and their perpetrators become more sophisticated, defense technologies must rely on innovation to stay ahead of threats.

Every entrepreneur and businessman should follow McLaren’s lead: adopt new technology to defend and protect your ideas and your work. McLaren has taken critical steps to ensure its cyber integrity; Businesses should too.