South Korean car manufacturer Hyundai has struck its first deal with a tech group on connected car development, teaming with Cisco to “establish an industry-leading connected car platform”, including creating a testing environment for vehicle simulation with a Korean start-up.

The companies will cooperate on research to analyse the flow of data and verify new technologies for connected cars.

Hyundai will invest in cloud, big data analytics and connected car security technologies, with “huge investment” in research and development.

The car maker will initially focus on the next generation of in-vehicle networks at the core of connected car technology, optimising the transmission and reception of data within the vehicle.

The technology will transmit and receive data faster, and also allow each subsystem inside the vehicle to communicate more effectively. Hyundai believes this is essential to enabling future connected cars to incorporate the complex features that transfer growing amounts of data in real time.

Hyundai recently outlined its connected car roadmap, introducing service fields as part of its “hyper-connected intelligent cars” concept.

The roadmap includes smart remote maintenance service, autonomous driving and a connectivity mobility hub.

The carmaker is attempting to find new growth areas as it battles a downturn in its fortunes amid slowing sales in China and other emerging markets. Hyundai posted its lowest annual profit in five years in 2015 as China’s economic slowdown hit sales in the world’s largest car market.

Earlier this month Japanese rival Toyota expanded a five-year-old partnership with Microsoft to develop new Internet-connected vehicle services for owners and dealers. Last month General Motors bought driverless car start-up Cruise for $1 billion.

Internet security guru Eugene Kaspersky recently warned on the vulnerability of internet-connected cars. He said the sheer number of connected devices in cars, from safety sensors to GPS trackers, means they have become “more safe but less secure” to hackers.