Cyberattacks on Israel have risen exponentially in the past four years, reaching up to two million attacks against crucial Israeli frameworks on a daily basis.
Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported Thursday that he number of cyberattacks on Israeli computers responsible for critical infrastructure has grown from hundreds or thousands a day four years ago to as many as two million a day.
Prof. Isaac Ben Israel, the director of Tel Aviv University’s Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center, spoke to Israel’s The Marker financial site ahead of next week’s 6th Annual International Cybersecurity Conference at TAU. “We discover between 200,000 and 2 million hacking attempts every day in Israel on critical infrastructure such as water, electricity and railroads, but they are well-protected,” Ben Israel said.
While in a few cases hackers obtained sensitive information, they have not caused disruptions or damage, he added. “In the last two years especially, we’ve learned how to identify hackers by their country of origin, by terror and criminal organizations or intelligence agencies and the level of threat. We can also identify their targets.”
There is a war of global proportions playing out behind the scenes in the cyber realms. The IDF’s new Lotem unit is responsible for defending the IDF’s critical infrastructure from such attacks. In a special underground cyber operations room, they identify attacks, analyze risk, and work to prevent and mitigate the risks presented.
Israel is considered to be a leading cyber-security powerhouse. Its rise as one of the world’s leaders in cybersecurity has been boosted by cooperation between the military, government, education, and private sectors, a level of partnership unmatched in the Western world.
Israel’s cybersecurity sector is now worth half a billion dollars annually—second only to the United States.
By: United with Israel Staff