Ever since the beginning, we’ve thrived on helping the automotive industry tackle big issues. Starting in the 1990s, the main challenge was vehicle theft, which at one point represented 20% of all crime. Insurance premiums shot up and many insurers stopped covering certain high-risk vehicles, forcing car makers to take the problem seriously.
 

David Bell, Gareth Jones and David McClure had worked at various major car makers during this time and recognised that traditional engineering methods were not enough. These three engineers began thinking outside of the box: visiting prisons to interview convicted car thieves and reverse-engineering commonly-used theft tools to identify countermeasures. Seeing their research, major OEMs contacted them for support. They founded SBD Automotive in 1997 (at that time Secured by Design) to help apply these lessons.
 

Soon after, SBD Automotive signed Toyota as its first client, and within two years we had helped them win multiple industry awards for vehicle security.
 

We’ve been on the hunt for new challenges ever since – from helping cars become more connected, to deploying life-saving driver assistance systems, our philosophy has remained the same: big challenges need fresh, independent, innovative thinking.