BICOM

Israeli Security Agency Shin Bet Chief Nadav Argaman has revealed that Israel prevented 2,000 terrorist attacks in the past 18 months using its cyber capabilities.

Speaking at the Cyber Week conference in Tel Aviv, Argaman said: “The Shin Bet is dealing with considerable threats, from terrorist organisations to individual hackers. In order to foil these threats, we have carried out dozens of sophisticated and successful operations.”

Israeli cyber officials have been reluctant in the past to discuss the use of offensive capabilities against hackers. However, “with the help of high-quality intelligence received through our cyber network, many terrorist attacks have been thwarted,” Argaman said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also addressed the conference, telling delegates that “cyber security is serious business,” warning that “the distinction between high-tech and low-tech is rapidly disappearing”.

The Prime Minister added that cyber security “is a problem for all governments … to protect their military or their security organisations or their critical infrastructure, their businesses and every single organisation,” and declared Israel “is ready to cooperate with other countries … because in general, again with some reservations, we’re better together”.

In this context, on Monday, Israel and the US agreed to establish joint bilateral working groups on international cyber policy, critical infrastructure defence, research and development, and human capital development.

Speaking on the joint project, Thomas Bossert, assistant to US President Donald Trump for homeland security and counterterrorism, said the US “will move forward internationally in meaningful bilateral efforts, such as the one we enjoy with Great Britain and now with Israel, while continuing to build like-minded coalition partners that can act together”.