The AI Awakening: Findings from Upstream’s 2026 Automotive Cyber Report

In 2025, ransomware became the most disruptive threat to the Automotive and Smart Mobility ecosystem, while AI, APIs, and cloud backends rapidly expanded the attack surface attackers now exploit.

In this webinar, cybersecurity experts Jennifer Tisdale and Giuseppe Serio offer insights from Upstream’s latest analysis of real world automotive cyber incidents and active threat actor behavior.

The discussion explores key findings after monitoring hundreds of cyber incidents and tracking nearly 2,000 of the most active threat actors, and what it means for 2026:

• Ransomware attacks accounted for 44% of publicly-reported incidents, doubling in number compared to 2024
• 68% of incidents were related to data breaches, echoing the impact of ransom attacks
• 61% of incidents had the potential to impact thousands to millions of mobility assets

The session frames what automotive and mobility leaders should expect next, and where cybersecurity strategies must evolve as attackers increasingly target backend systems and digital platforms at scale.