Israel: Technologies tackling sophisticated cyber security threats

At the Cybertech conference in Tel Aviv in late March, visitors could observe - alongside the cyber security industry's latest products and gadgets - the symbiosis between Israel's high-tech military, its government and its start-up sector.

Executives and fund managers sat alongside uniformed army officers in the plenary hall, or wandered the conference's Start-Up Pavilion to talk to entrepreneurs. Israel's National Cyber Bureau, part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, led journalists - many from Asia - on a tour of exhibitors ranging from big incumbents, such as IBM, Elbit and Cisco, to new concerns vying for early-stage financing.

There was a panel discussion featuring veterans of Unit 8200, the elite military spying unit that was a pioneer in big data - sifting through masses of material to identify trends - and many of whose graduates enter high-tech businesses.

The biggest booth promoted the "CyberSpark" initiative in Beer Sheva. Cyber companies cluster around the city's university and tech park, and by 2020 two Israel Defence Forces military bases - including new headquarters for Unit 8200 - will be built nearby.

"You buy Swiss watches from Switzerland and information security from Israel," says Udi Mokady, chief executive of CyberArk, which listed its shares on Nasdaq in September in Israeli cyber's biggest public flotation of 2014.

"People know there is a lot of innovation in this space, and good engineering talent to wrap it into stable products that will not destroy what an enterprise is trying to do."

Israel, whose state bodies and com­panies are prime targets for hackers, built its cyber-related offensive, defensive and snooping functions as a product of its long regional conflict - "turning lemons into lemonade", as Mr Mokady puts it.

Now its moment to cash in on this expertise has come.

Last year's high-profile hacks at Sony, JPMorgan and Target brought home to global businesses an evolving and increasingly sophisticated cyber threat.

Companies' strategies are widening from a focus on malware and hacks from outside to a broader approach where they have to assume they can be targeted from within, and must be defensive on multiple fronts.

"There is no balance between attackers and defenders in the area of cyber," says Eviatar Matania, head of Israel's National Cyber Bureau. "We need to develop and produce technologies that enable us to balance this equation. Otherwise there is a real threat to western civilisation, to the economy, and to society as we know it."

The warning from Israel's top cyber-official might be interpreted as self-serving, given Israeli companies' increasing profits in the field. According to Mr Matania's office, Israel's annual exports in the sector exceed $3bn, and the country claims 10 per cent of the world's investments in cyber security.

However, non-Israeli executives share this view. Kris Lovejoy, IBM's chief information security officer, describes the threat to companies as "a war".

"We can't build fences around our organisation and expect to keep bad guys out; it's a biological warfare metaphor we are fighting today," says Ms Lovejoy. "Everyone is infected - everyone - [and] the bad guys are in our organisation."

Israel's start-ups and established companies alike are developing products to deal with this advanced threat.

CyberArk specialises in what it calls privileged account security - a layer or "digital vault" inside organisations' existing networks that can prevent an attack by someone who has attained inside access.

"We break a critical part of the cyber attack chain," says Mr Mokady.

LightCyber, another company showing its wares in Tel Aviv, describes its stock in trade as "active breach protection". Its product uses advanced algorithms to sift through mountains of data from users and devices to pick out potential malicious behaviour.

"We assume networks can get breached and attackers can get in," says Giora Engel, the company's chief product officer. "With our product, it's possible to detect the breach from the very first day, before there is damage."

BioCatch, another Israeli concern, provides "behavioural biometrics" to banks, ecommerce companies and others. Its product can detect malware or robotic activity, and gather information on how a user interacts with a password request or uses a mouse, then advises a client whether to go ahead with a transaction.

As the number of daily appliances connected to the internet worldwide grows into the billions, companies are developing protection from hacks for the Internet of Things.

Argus Cyber Security, another Israeli start-up, is developing protection for cars against hacker attacks on their telematics, infotainment units or other devices that are vulnerable through internet or Bluetooth connections.

The company, with a staff of 20 cyber engineers - including veterans of Unit 8200 - is working with carmakers and other industry entities, and has representatives in Germany, Japan and the US, close to the industry's big players.

Tom Barav, the company's marketing director, says: "We want to help prevent massive cyber recalls that could cost car manufacturers huge amounts."

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