by Nick Kolyohin
TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- Israel aims to lead the cyber security space in the world and looks for more international cooperation.
The cyber world doesn't see boundaries, consequently it required a global effort to fight the cyber attacks.
"Iran cyber-attacks Israel on a daily basis. We monitor these attacks and we foil these attacks all the time," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday.
Netanyahu spoke at CyberTech 2019 Tel-Aviv, a cyber technology summit, which was held on Jan. 28-30. Hundreds of companies and thousands of people around the world took part in the event.
Netanyahu stressed that any country could be cyber-attacked nowadays, therefore every country needs the combination of a national cyber defense effort and a robust cybersecurity industry.
Israel runs for many years a national initiative to evolve a broad collaboration between the local cyber industry, army, security forces, and the academia.
By the end of 2018, there were 450 active cyber security companies in Israel and 60 of them were founded in the past year.
Israeli cyber security companies raised a total investment of 1.19 billion U.S. dollars in 2018, a record breaking amount for the fourth year in a row, exceeding investments in 2017 by 47 percent, according to Luzzatto's report.
"Israel is receiving 20 percent of the global share in private cyber security investments," Netanyahu said.
The demand for cyber solutions is in constant growth worldwide.
"Civil aviation is an area that requires the most immediate cyber defense solution, but it is one of the hundreds. Everything today is vulnerable, and everything is under attack," Netanyahu added.
Israel sees a big opportunity in the cyber defense world.
"I decided several years ago to turn Israel into one of the five cyber powers of the world, and that required allowing combination of military intelligence, academia, and industry to converge in one place," Netanyahu noted.
Israel's southern district central city of Beer Sheva, close to the Negev desert, was chosen several years ago to become the country's capital of the cyber security industry.
Israeli high-tech industry is mainly concentrated in the center of the country, around the city of Tel Aviv, which is the most advanced, multi-cultured metropolitan in the country.
In the future, if there will be enough continuous support from the government, Beer Sheva can become a leading cyber center on a global scale.
The Israeli government supports high tech giants by keeping low taxes and easing regulations, though the cyber tech can be regarded as heavy regulated industry.
Israel believes that cyber will become one of the four biggest industries in the world.
Yossi Vardi, one of the most renown Israeli entrepreneurs and investors in the high-tech industry, told Xinhua that the cyber world creates many business opportunities for the Israeli industry.
The amount of cyber attacks is growing all the time, accordingly, there will be more investment in protection, said Vardi, adding that Artificial Intelligence could be used as part of future defense technology.
Vardi claimed that part of the attackers is in countries that are taking part in global cooperation to fight the cyber attacks, but on the other hand, they conduct the attacks themselves.
