The future looks fantastic for drivers. Electric cars are set to begin reducing driving costs and helping manufacturers meet emissions requirements within the next two decades. At the same time, driverless car technology will be slowly making its way into general use, allowing drivers passengers to use their daily commutes more productively, engaging in activities such as watching streaming video though those new 4G connections announced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

As all of these new technologies enter the car, however, cars will begin to rely more and more on software. With software comes the possibility of entire vehicles being compromised.

Market Research firm ABI Research today released a new cybersecurity report focused on automobiles. The firm predicts that software security for vehicles will quickly become a huge industry as connected cars become the norm.

ABI forecasts that more than 20 million cars will ship with software security built-in by the year 2020. The firm believes such software will be needed prevent autonomous and communications systems from cyber-attacks. It is predicted that current enterprise security firms will license out technology to car companies woefully lacing in cybersecurity knowledge or infrastructure.

“So far connected car security has been mainly based on hardware protection and separation with infotainment and vehicle-centric safety systems shielded from each other. However, the shift towards cost-effective software-based security based on virtualization, containerization and sandboxing is well under way with Harman and Mentor Graphics as some of the leading vendors,” said Dominique Bonte, practice director at ABI.

Image via Tesla