Israel is promoting national “Cyber Dome”

Cyber chief Gaby Portnoy acknowledges that Iran “has become our dominant rival.”

Portnoy at Cyber Week. Photo by Israel Wail

In his first public speech, Gaby Portnoy, Director General of the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD), presented the new INCD project aimed at diminishing cyberattacks: the Cyber-Dome - a new big-data, AI, overall approach to proactive defense. Portnoy presented it at the annual Cyber Week event led by the INCD and Tel Aviv University cyber research center.

INCD data presented in the conference revealed that 1,500 attacks were halted during the last year by INCD's teams.

Relating to attackers, Portnoy said: "There is no longer only one type of an ideological official enemy. On the one hand - Iran has become our dominant rival in cyber, together with Hezbollah and Hamas. We see them, we know how they work, and we are there. On the other hand, the spectrum was also stretched - to attackers, attack groups, proxies, independent crime-organizations, and private people."

Portnoy analogized the Cyber Dome to Israel's Iron Dome. "The Cyber Dome will elevate national cyber-security by implementing new mechanisms in the national cyber perimeter, reducing the harm from cyber-attacks at scale.

“The Cyber Dome will also provide tools and services to elevate the protection of the national assets as a whole. The Dome is a new big-data, AI, overall approach to proactive defense. It will synchronize nation-level real-time detection, analysis, and mitigation of threats."

Portnoy added that, "We need to protect our national assets in the best possible way and make cybersecurity protocols we use for critical infrastructure available for more sectorial organizations - government and private."

He stressed that, "You cannot fight cyber aggression alone. You have to have partners, at home, in your defense community, in the government, in the different sectors, in the academy, in the private sector, and around the world."