Cyber attacks drive Israel to build hack-proof defence

TEL AVIV — In 2013, Israel Electric Corp registered several hundred potential hacks on its grid each hour.

Last year, the figure grew — to 20,000. None succeeded. Israel Electric, which controls more than 80 per cent of the country’s power production, has dramatically increased its cyber personnel, developed new defence tools and enhanced employee training, said Mr Yosi Shneck, senior vice-president of information and communications. The new protections reflect a nationwide effort to make Israel one of the most hack-proof countries in the world.

This year alone, the government established a national authority to help oversee protection of critical civilian systems, the military announced a reorganisation of all its anti-hacking units into one command and the central bank became what may be the first in the world to define mandatory cyber-defence steps for financial institutions.

“If I ranked the existential threats, cyber would come right behind nuclear weapons,” said Mr Carmi Gillon, chairman of Cytegic, a company that developed a digital dashboard and tools to help keep companies protected.

Israel and the United States face some of the most serious cyber assailants in the world, said Mr Daniel Garrie, executive managing partner of cyber-consulting firm Law & Forensics. That forces them to be “light years ahead” in prevention.

While attempted hack attacks on Israel reached 2 million a day during last year’s fighting in Gaza, the country has yet to report destructive events such as the data theft from about 22 million people at the US Office of Personnel Management last month. However, the threat is growing. Anonymous, a loosely-connected global hacker collective, called in April for a hacking onslaught on Israel. The Jewish state was the second-most-hit in the world after the US that month, according to monitoring website Hackmageddon.

In March, cybersecurity company Check Point Software Technologies detected malware that it suspected came from Lebanon. The alleged targets were defence contractors, telecommunications and media companies in 10 countries, including Israel.

It is not enough just to have sophisticated defences, said Mr Amos Yadlin, a former military intelligence chief who now heads Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies. “You can’t be a good defender unless you understand the offence,” he said. “Therefore, defensive efforts must overlap to some degree with offensive efforts, including those of intelligence collection.”

For instance, Iran says Israel tried to sabotage its nuclear programme with the Stuxnet virus, and attributed the Flame virus, which wreaked havoc on Iranian computer systems in the energy sector, to “illegitimate regimes”. Israeli officials have declined to confirm or deny its involvement.

Cytegic chief executive officer Shay Zandani, who established the Israeli Air Force’s information-security department in the 1990s, says many Israeli corporations are not protected against cyber attacks. In 2014, one in 10 cyber breaches was in the banking industry, according to a FireEye report.

Attacks targeting Israel’s financial sector have increased and become more sophisticated, according to a May report by Cytegic and cyber-consulting firm Konfidas. The industry targeted most by hack attacks: Information technology.

The Bank of Israel says it appears to be the world’s first central bank to define mandatory steps for cyber defence. Its regulations, issued in March, put pressure on the management to insure lenders are safe. “Israel is a geopolitical target and attacking the banking sector can damage our economy,” said Ms Rachel Jacoby, head of the central bank’s OpRisks management unit for technology and cyber. BLOOMBERG