General Motors Co. named an engineer to serve as its first cybersecurity chief as the automaker and its rivals come under increasing pressure to secure their vehicles against hackers.

GM manager Jeff Massimilla was promoted to the post as part of an eight-month review of product design and engineering, the company announced Tuesday.

According to a report from Reuters, security researchers have uncovered vulnerabilities in the tiny computers that manage all manner of operations in modern vehicles, and experts say it is only a matter of time before malicious hackers take advantage of those vulnerabilities to potentially harm drivers.

“The long-term trend is that the auto manufacturers will have to make security part of the hardware and software architecture,” says Egil Juliussen, an analyst with IHS Automotive. “It won’t make it impossible to hack, but it will make it hard enough so that there is no financial gain to do the hacking.”