Achieving Automated TISAX Compliance

Cyberattacks on the automotive industry are becoming more sophisticated. In its 2024 Automotive Cybersecurity Report, Upstream found that 50% of all automotive cyber incidents in 2023 had a high or massive impact. Similarly, 95% of all attacks in 2023 were executed remotely, and 37% of attacker activities in the deep and dark web target multiple original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) simultaneously. 

The Changing Automotive Security Landscape

International institutions are taking steps to help automotive organizations defend themselves against black hat hackers and other digital threats. In January 2024, for example, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) extended its UN Regulation No. 155, which requires automotive manufacturers to establish cybersecurity measures to prevent cyber threats, to include motorcycles, scooters, and electric bicycles with speeds exceeding 25 km/h. 

This regulation, which originally came into effect in January 2021, provides organizations in the automotive sector with a framework for identifying digital security risks, regularly updating risk assessments, responding to digital attacks, and implementing other processes.

Automotive digital security is also on the minds of individual nation-states. An example is the Trusted Information Security Assessment Exchange (TISAX). Since 2017, TISAX has acted as an assessment and exchange mechanism through which organizations can submit to audits in compliance with the information security requirements catalog developed by the German automotive group Verband Deutscher Automobilindustire (VDA).

That catalog, known as the VDA Information Security Assessment (VDA ISA), applies to companies that touch any German automotive supply chain point. Its industry-wide enforcement applies to auto manufacturers and OEMs, but it also reaches beyond that to encompass partners and suppliers.

Even if companies aren’t based in Germany and produce only a single microchip that will ultimately end up in a German vehicle, their network still falls under those requirements. Hence, they need to use TISAX to complete an information security assessment. 

Why a Pre-Audit Sprint Isn’t the Way to TISAX Compliance

Supply chain managers responsible for controlling the digital environment of the supply chain know they need to produce evidence of TISAX compliance for their OEM in the form of an audit certificate. If a satisfactory audit certificate isn’t provided, supply chain managers can lose access to their OEM’s technology environments, hindering their ability to conduct business as usual. So, naturally, companies are willing to pour significant resources into audit preparation to reach their targets.

However, this approach to audit preparation also has drawbacks. Audit preparation for pertinent companies can take IT teams away from their regular work for weeks and months. Focused on producing evidence of TISAX compliance across the network, these pre-audit sprints drain time and resources and produce compliance levels only for a specific time.

Automating TISAX with Tripwire Enterprise

Instead of throwing all you have at cultivating short-term compliance, teams can use Fortra’s Tripwire® Enterprise to maintain truly continuous compliance and stay audit-ready year-round. Tripwire Enterprise is a security configuration management (SCM) suite that provides fully integrated solutions for policy, file integrity, and remediation management. Once Tripwire Enterprise is installed in an environment, it uses the TISAX policy against a current configuration state and automatically alerts security teams to non-compliant assets with instructions for remediation. It provides continuous—rather than point-in-time—compliance.

Provided below are some additional benefits on how Tripwire Enterprise can help organizations achieve and maintain TISAX compliance:

• Speed up audits and reduce audit preparation  
• Be 24/7 complaint and improve cybersecurity
• Use cybersecurity resources more efficiently
• Use compliance as an easy-to-measure KPI
• Track compliance and configuration drift
• Get clear, automated change documentation

Organizations can use Tripwire Enterprise to monitor multiple compliance policies at once. For example, they may need to apply TISAX, ISO27001, and IEC62443 policies in tandem. Tripwire Enterprise provides access to the broadest available library of platform and policy combinations to ensure compliance is enforced comprehensively across the environment. Tripwire Enterprise also integrates into industrial asset discovery and inventory solutions for more straightforward implementation and deep visibility into the compliance state of operational technology (OT) environments. 

Why is SCM Critical for Continuous TISAX Compliance?

Monitoring the configuration state within a network is a twofold beneficial process: it ensures continuous compliance with compliance standards like the Trusted Information Security Assessment Exchange, but it also staves off potential cyberattacks and breaches by keeping configurations secure. When done right, SCM automatically monitors the configurations of an organization's devices against a known baseline and issues an alert when there’s configuration drift. Those instances of drift could be traced back to malicious actors attempting to modify network devices as part of their attack chain.

With SCM, security teams can quickly act upon that information to investigate configuration changes. This security control can, therefore, do much more than just help professionals return their employers' device configurations to the desired state. Indeed, it can help them spot a potential security issue and take remediation steps before it balloons into a security incident.

Tripwire’s SCM suite, Tripwire Enterprise, contains a pre-built policy for TISAX that organizations can leverage for continuous compliance and audit-preparedness, enforce multiple compliance policies across their environment, and take advantage of the cybersecurity benefits that arise from TISAX compliance.