The automotive industry’s ecosystem doesn’t end when a shiny new, EV-powered car rolls off the assembly line. The downstream segment comprises businesses that focus on what happens after a vehicle is manufactured. Valued at an estimated $600 billion in the U.S. alone, this segment includes everything from service centers to parts distributors to after-market automotive auction sites.
These organizations typically handle and store petabytes or terabytes of sensitive data: customer personally identifiable information (PII) and transaction information, vehicle identifiers, and even intellectual property, such as parts schematics and pricing strategies. Like their counterparts in manufacturing, they are increasingly vulnerable to ransomware attacks, AI-driven threats, and business disruptions that erode revenue and trust. The risk is real: it’s estimated that data breaches currently account for nearly 70% of security incidents in the automotive sector.
In this blog, we’ll show you how three leading automotive brands have reduced their data and compliance risk at scale while driving measurable cost savings and operational efficiencies.
What did it take? Cyera: a single platform that provides non-stop, end-to-end visibility into and protection for all data types everywhere. With complete data context at their fingertips, these security teams are empowered to discover, prioritize, and remediate incidents faster than ever before.
Valvoline’s digital evolution starts with data
Founded in 1866 by Dr. John Ellis as the world’s first trademarked motor oil, Valvoline evolved into a brand known by millions of drivers in the US. After divesting from its Global Products business in 2023, Valvoline transitioned to a rapidly growing retail-only business. It currently has more than 2,300 service centers in North America and aims to scale up to 3,500.
Legacy tools can’t keep pace with expansion
Valvoline’s accelerated expansion brought with it major challenges around securing and governing sensitive consumer data: a mounting volume of unclassified data, confusion and inaccuracies around data ownership, errors arising from manual processes and a fragmented tool set, and inefficient security audits. Additionally, storing more than 11 million unused records and 1,600 outdated accounts was costly and created unnecessary exposure.
A secure data landscape with Cyera
CISO Corey Kaemming turned to Cyera to manage data in order to keep pace with the company’s growth. In a mere 10 minutes, the solution was up and running. The platform transformed the company’s approach to data security by delivering:
- A complete data inventory in 30 days
- Clear separation of global operations data from retail data
- Continuous data monitoring to identify new risks and issues
- Accurate, in-depth data intelligence for secure AI usage and governance
- A single source of truth to ease compliance, fuel strategic planning, and provide accountability
“Cyera helped us move from ‘we think’ to risk-based decisions. Now the board sees facts, not guesses,” said Kaemming. “Having Cyera classify and inventory our data has been a huge win. And I’ll be honest—it’s been fun! I feel like I’m ahead of the curve.” (Read the case study.)
GPC shifts from an “I don’t know state” to a comprehensive understanding of data risk
Genuine Parts Company (GPC), a leading distributor of automotive and industrial parts, is best known for its Napa Auto Parts and Motion brands. Its footprint spans 10,800 locations across 17 countries. Like Valvoline, the organization was fast-tracking its expansion, only in this case, through an aggressive mergers and acquisitions (M&A) strategy. This resulted in a disparate infrastructure, with 40-plus petabytes of data residing in more than 18 cloud environments, multiple SaaS applications, and an on-premises environment.
You can’t secure what you can’t see
For years, Damian Apone, Director of Global Retail Cybersecurity, wrestled with finding the answer to a fundamental question: Where does our data live? As he said, ˝If you don’t know where it’s at, you can’t protect it.”
GPC’s patchwork of unintegrated tools were unable to provide a complete, centralized data inventory. Moreover, the legacy data protection tool was limited in scope, covering only Office 365 and unstructured data.
Cyera drives down data risk
These gaps in data visibility and risk exposure prompted Apone to evaluate nine vendors in the data security space. Cyera emerged as the hands-down winner. During the proof of value (PoV), Cyera showed that GPC’s sensitive data estimates were off the mark by 500%. Analyzing just a small subset of the data estate uncovered $145 million in risk exposure. What’s more, Cyera had a 95% true positive rate, while other vendors lagged far behind.
After deploying Cyera, GPC slashed risk and transformed security operations. In just six months, data protection moved from a top five corporate risk to nearly the bottom of the list. By implementing Cyera, GCP scored tangible wins:
- Lowered risk by $45 million in six months
- Reduced blind spots by scanning the entire Office 365 environment in six weeks
- Discovered 532 billion sensitive data records company-wide
- Remediated 98% of cloud issues in six months
“If you really want to … understand where your risk and exposure is, there's only one solution that will give you that, and that's Cyera,” said Apone. (Read the case study.)
ACV Auctions sustains dealer trust with a data-first security posture
ACV Auctions is a digital marketplace where car dealerships, rental companies, and fleet managers can buy and sell previously owned vehicles. Trust and transparency are at the company’s core mission. ACV Auction strives to make the dealer auction experience fair and safe by providing unbiased vehicle reports, market-value pricing, and a seamless, secure user experience.
An upswing in business impacts data management
The company’s extensive AWS cloud environment was in constant flux, resulting from a surge of new customers signing up to use the platform. From a business standpoint, it’s a great problem to have, but from a security perspective, more customers means the amount of data is continually increasing.
Adding to this expanding ecosystem of more than 140 terabytes of data were new applications and data sets with ownership dispersed across the organization. To improve its security posture in this dynamic landscape, ACV Auctions needed a clear picture of its entire data estate to prioritize and remediate issues faster based on actual data risk.
Pervasive data security with Cyera
Erik Bataller, VP of Information Security Officer, chose Cyera as the right platform for the job. It immediately identified sensitive data exposures in the cloud, including unencrypted PII. Cyera also helped the team monitor and refine access policies based on business purpose.
Partnering with Cyera continues to achieve positive outcomes for ACV Auction:
- Fortifies security posture by identifying sensitive data exposures in the cloud and enables the team to harden user access policies based on real-time findings
- Drives more efficient, targeted incident response and vulnerability management by sharing detailed, high-accuracy data insights
- Curbs data sprawl and cuts cloud storage costs (potentially saving as much as $500,000 annually) by eliminating redundant, irrelevant “ghost” data stores
“Cyera enables me to see where my data is, all of my data events, who is accessing the data, and what is being done with that data across all of my accounts and data stores,” said Bataller. “This enables me to secure my data and do a better job of troubleshooting and managing my data.” (Read the case study.)
Cyera invites you to look under the hood
Fast-growing automotive businesses are leaving their legacy tools behind and choosing Cyera for full data visibility and context. Are you ready to rev up your data security? Book a demo.
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