Technology

If you&ve read anything of mine in the past year, you know just how complicated security can be.

Every day it seems therea new security lapse, a breach, a hack, or an inadvertent exposure, such as leaving a cloud storage server unprotected without a password. These things happen, but they don&t have to; aecurity isn&t as difficult as it sounds, but thereno one-size-fits-all solution.

We sat down with three experts on the Extra Crunch stage at TechCrunchDisrupt SF earlier this month to help startups and founders understand what they need to do, when, and why.

We asked GoogleHeather Adkins, DuoDug Song, and IOActiveJennifer Sunshine Steffens for their best advice. Herewhat they had to say.

Quotes have been edited and condensed for clarity.

1. Don&t put off the security conversation

The one resounding message from the panel: don&t put security off.

&There are basically three areas that folks should start considering how to bucket those risks,& said DuoSong. &The first is corporate risk in defending your users and applications they access. The second is application security and product risk. A third area is is around production, security and making sure that the operation of your security program is something that keeps up with that risk. And then a fourth — a new and emerging space — is trust, and not just privacy, but also safety.&

Itbetter to be proactive about security than to be reactive to a data breach; not only will it help your company bolster its security posture, but it also serves as an important factor in future fundraising negotiations.

Song said founders have a &very direct obligation& to think about security as soon as they take someone elsemoney, but especially when a company starts gathering user or customer data. &You have to put yourself in the shoes of those folks whose data you have to protect,& he said. &Itnot just your existential threats to your business, but you do have a responsibility, right to figure out how to do this well.&

IOActiveSteffens said startups are already a target — simply because itassumed many won&t have thought much about security.

&A lot of attackers will go after startups who have high value data, because they know security is not a priority and itgoing to be a lot easier to get ahold of,& she said. &Data these days is extraordinarily valuable.&

2. Start with the security basics

GoogleAdkins, who runs the search giantinternal information security team, joined the company almost two decades ago when it was just the size of a large startup. Her job is to keep the companynetwork, assets, and employees safe.

&When I got there, they were so fanatical about security already, that half of the job was already done,& she said. &From the moment [Google] took its first search query, it was thinking about where those logs are stored, who has access to them, and what is its responsibility to its users,& she said.

&Startups who are successful with security are those where the chief executive and the founders are fanatical from day one and understand what threats exist to the business and what they need to do to protect it,& she said.

Song said many popular products and technologies these days come with strong security by default, such as iPhones, Chromebooks, security keys and Windows 10.

&You&re better off than the 90% of large companies out there,& he said. &Thatone of those few strategic advantages you have as a smaller, nimbler organization that doesn&t have a lot of legacy,& he added. &You can do things better from the start.&

&A lot of the basics are still key,& said Steffens. &Even as we come out with the new shiny technology, having things like firewalls and antivirus, and multi-factor authentication.&

&Security doesn&t always have to be a money thing,& she said. &Therea lot of open source technology thatreally great.&

3. Start looking at security as an investment

&The sooner you start thinking about security, the less expensive it is in the end,& said Steffens.

Thatbecause, the experts said, proactive security gives companies an edge over competitors who tack on security solutions after a breach. Iteasier and more cost-effective to get it right the first time without having to fill in gaps years later.

It might be a hard sell to funnel money into something where you won&t actively see financial returns, which is why founders should think of security as investments for the future. The idea is that if you spend a little money at the start, it can save you down the line from the inevitable — a security incident that will cost you in bad headlines, lost customer trust, and potentially fines or other sanctions.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine took part in a joint presentation by the chiefs of a number of international space agencies at the annual International Astronautical Conference on Monday. At the end of the event, a question was put to the entire group — when do we get to Mars?

After a joke answer of &Tuesday& by ESA Director General Jan Wörner, Bridenstine followed with a serious answer that he believes — provided everyone can get their governments to actually back them and provide the support needed — itpossible that astronauts could land on Mars by as early as 2035.

&If we accelerate the Moon landing, we&re accelerating the Mars landing — thatwhat we&re doing,& Bridenstine said, referring to the agencyaggressive, accelerated timeline of aiming to land the first American woman and next American man on the Moon by 2024 with the Artemis program.

&If our budgets were sufficient,& Bridenstine said, turning to his colleagues from NASAinternational equivalents, &I would suggest that we could do it by 2035.&

&The goal is to land on the Moon within five years and be sustainable by 2028,& Bridenstine said during a press conference following the agency leadership panel, clarifying that sustainability means &people living and working on another world for long periods of time.&

The caveat Bridenstine offered, that budgets match ambition, is not an insignificant one. NASA just faced a congressional subcommittee budgetary hearing about its plan to get to the Moon by 2024, and faced some heavy skepticism. From NASAscientific and technical assessment of Mars mission feasibility for a 2035 target, however, the agency previously discussed this date as early as 2015.

The Station is back for another week of news and analysis on all the ways people and goods move from Point A to Point B — today and in the future. As always, I&m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior reporter at TechCrunch.

Portions of the newsletter will be published as an article on the main site after it has been emailed to subscribers (thatwhat you&re reading now). To get everything, you have to sign up. And itfree. To subscribe, go to our newsletters page and click on The Station.

This week, we&re looking at factories in China, scooters in San Francisco and touchscreens in cars, among other things.

Please reach out anytime with tips and feedback. Tell us what you love and don&t love so much. Email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to share thoughts, opinions or tips or send a direct message to @kirstenkorosec.

Micromobbin&

Welcome to micromobbin& — a weekly dive into the tiny but mighty chaotic world of micromobility. This also happens to be a place where Megan Rose Dickey reigns. Follow her @meganrosedickey.

Uber, Lime and Spin each deployed 500 electric scooters in San Francisco as part of the citypermitting program. This means residents in SF can now choose from Uber-owned JUMP, Lime, Spin or Scoot scooters. Unfortunately for Skip, the company did not receive a permit to continue operating in the city, which means layoffs at the local level are afoot, Skip CEO Sanjay Dastoor said earlier this week.

Meanwhile, former Uber executive Dmitry Shevelenko unveiled Tortoise, an autonomous repositioning software for micromobility operators. The idea is to help make it easier for these companies to more strategically deploy their respective vehicles and reposition them when needed.

Letclose this section with the obligatory funding round. Wheels, a pedal-less electric bike-share startup, raised a $50 million round led by DBL Partners. That brought its total funding to $87 million.

Oh, but wait, TC reporter Romain Dillet reminded us that micromobbin& happens outside of the U.S. too. Uber also announced this past week that it has integrated its app with French startup Cityscoot, which has a fleet of free-floating moped-style scooters.

This is the latest example of Uberplan to become a super mobility app that goes well beyond its own network of ride-hailing vehicles.

— Megan Rose Dickey

Snapshot: Touchscreen tech

We&ve seen a lot of different approaches when it comes to engaging with connected car services: head-up displays on the windshield, small screens perched on the dashboard, interactive voice and, of course, connections and mounts for smartphones.

But how about if your whole car becomes the touchscreen? A startup called Sentons is working on technology that could make that happen. The company uses a technique involving processors and AI that emit and read ultrasound to detect physical movement on a surface, such as touch, force or gestures, and users can create &virtual controls& on the fly that work on these surfaces.

This week, it released SurfaceWave, a software and hardware stack that works on glass, metal and plastic surfaces of smartphones.

CEO Jess Lee says the next iterations are going to be the kinds of materials that are used to make car dashboards and other interior surfaces you find inside the vehicle, including leather, thicker plastic and other materials. The company is already engaging with automotive companies, Lee told TechCrunch.

I can see a lot of possibilities for this in the human-driven vehicles of today. We&ve already seen how Tesla has changed how we think about infotainment systems in cars. And then thereelectric vehicle startup Byton, which plans to bring a vehicle to market with a touchscreen that extends along the entire dashboard.

The real opportunity for Sentons will be with autonomous vehicles, a product that will afford its passengers more leisure time.

— Ingrid Lunden

Made in China

Earlier this week, Tesla was given the OK to begin producing vehicles at its $2 billion factory in Shanghai. Tesla was added to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technologylist of approved automotive manufacturers.

Now we&ll watch and wait to see if production starts this month. Expect the topic of China and this factory to come up during Teslaearnings call with analysts October 23.

In other China factory news, we hear that electric vehicle startup Byton plans to host a splashy opening ceremony in early November for its new plant. The event will include lots of Chinese officials, company executives and maybe a preview of a near-final production version of its M-Byte vehicle.

Bytonfactory in Nanjing covers some 800,000 square meters (8.6 million square feet) funded with a total investment of more than $1.5 billion. Over the summer, the walls and roof went up, equipment was installed and commissioning began in five major workshops: stamping, welding, paint, battery and assembly.

The plant will begin trial production in late 2019.

This all sounds great, but there have been challenges, and the constant requirement for capital is one of them. Byton has delayed the launch of the production version of the M-Byte by two quarters. Itnow looking like commercial production will begin by the end of the second quarter of 2020.

Here are a couple of interesting tidbits for those manufacturing geeks out there:

• The stamping shop completes one panel every 3 seconds on average. Byton claims it will be one of the fastest stamping production lines in China.
• The welding shop incorporates 335 welding robots supplied by KUKA and boosts the automation rate to 99%, according to Byton.
• The paint shop is equipped with a &3 Coating 2 Baking& system and thin film pre-treatment as well as the transverse &Eco-Incure& oven technology.
• The battery shop will produce and assemble battery packs, designed independently by Byton. Battery maker CATL provides the battery cells and modules and aluminum maker Constellium supplies the aluminum battery tray.

A little bird

We hear a lot. But we&re not selfish. Letshare. A little bird is where we pass along insider tips and what we&re hearing or finding from reliable, informed sources in the industry. This isn&t a place for unfounded gossip.

To get a &little bird& and the rest of the newsletter, please subscribe. Just goto our newsletters page and click on The Station.

What does systems engineering in AVs mean?

I recently spoke to Randol Aikin, the head of systems engineering at self-driving trucks startup Ike Robotics, about the companyapproach, which is based on a methodology developed at MIT called Systems Theoretic Process Analysis. STPA is the foundation for Ikeproduct development.

The company also released a wickedly long safety report (ithalfway down that landing page in the link provided).

The complete interview was included in the emailed newsletter. Yet another reason to subscribe to this free newsletter. Hereone quote from the interview with Aikin:

We asked the question, what do we have to prove to ourselves and demonstrate in order to be on a public road safely? Itthe same question that we&re going to have to answer for the product as well, which is, what do we need to prove to assure that we&re safe to operate without a human in the cab?

Itone of the huge unproven hypotheses. Anybody in this space that doesn&t consider that to be a huge technical challenges is ignoring a really thorny and important question.

Who will own the future of transportation?

Our mobility coverage extends to Extra Crunch. Check out my latest article on who will own the future of transportation based on insights from Zoox CEO Aicha Evans and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. The idea here is to explore some of the nuances of this loaded question.

Extra Crunch requires a paid subscription and you can sign up here.