Israel’s 2014 Civilian Cybersecurity Exports Were Triple the UK’s 2016 Target, Analysis Reports

Israel has become one of the world’s leading centers for cybersecurity, according to an article by Lior Tabansky, Head of Research Development at Tel Aviv University’s Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center. The article says Israel hosts the world’s second-largest cybersecurity cluster, with 12 percent of the 500 largest global cybersecurity firms, behind the San Francisco metropolitan area’s 32 percent. It also reports 470 active cybersecurity start-ups and the most venture capital per capita. In 2014, the article notes, Israel’s civilian cybersecurity exports were three times higher than the target the United Kingdom had set for 2016.

Much of this activity is tied to foreign companies. The article reports that a typical Israeli start-up is often acquired by an American firm or lists on the Nasdaq. Google and Microsoft were the most active corporate buyers of Israeli companies since 2014, acquiring ten and eight companies, respectively. The article also says that Apple, Broadcom, Qualcomm and Nvidia design chips in Israel, that Google and Amazon follow suit, and that Intel has designed CPUs and other chips there for decades. Israeli experts work in Israel, the article says, but their employers, partners, target markets and investors are largely foreign. It adds that Israel has attracted one-fifth of global private cybersecurity investment since 2019.

The article cites the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which places Israel in its second tier of states with world-leading strengths in some of seven cyber categories, alongside China, Russia, the United Kingdom and France. According to the article, Israel is particularly strong in civilian cybersecurity, core cyber-intelligence capability, and the development and use of sophisticated offensive cyber capability.

The article describes Israeli cyber operations aimed at Iran. It states that Israel has carried out elaborate cyber-effects campaigns to counter Iran’s threat and obstruct its nuclear program. It describes the Stuxnet malware, which it says caused unexplained mechanical failures in Iranian centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear plant, and calls it the most audacious and impactful cyber-effects campaign to date. The article does not provide independent confirmation of these operations. It also reports a 2020 cyber attack that sabotaged shipping and cargo handling at a major Iranian port, which it describes as possibly a swift retaliation for an Iranian attempt to sabotage rural water facilities in Israel. Here the article presents this as a possibility, not an established fact. Such capabilities, it argues, have helped create what it calls intelligence dominance alongside Israeli airstrikes. Offensive power of this kind carries heavy responsibility for those who wield it (Luke 12:48).

On the domestic side, the article says Israel set up a national Critical Infrastructure Protection arrangement seventeen years ago, with the state taking a large share of what it calls “shared responsibility.” After Stuxnet was discovered in 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a task force to formulate a national cyber strategy. The article says Professor Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Isaac Ben Israel launched the National Cyber Initiative that year. Its recommendations were adopted in 2011 as Government Resolution No. 3611, “Advancing National Cyberspace Capabilities.”

The article also describes the creation of the Israeli National Cyber Directorate (INCD), a civilian governmental body. Unlike cybersecurity agencies elsewhere, it has no law-enforcement or intelligence mission. The article says this design aims to reduce tension between basic freedoms and security, and notes that it drew considerable resentment from the defense establishment. It links the push for a strictly civilian agency to the 2013 Snowden leaks, which revealed numerous global surveillance programs. According to the article, in nine years the INCD’s civilian responsibilities grew from policy and capability building to information sharing, daily cyber defense operations through the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IL), and critical infrastructure protection.

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