‫משרד ראש הממשלה‬
THE PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE
‫مکتب رئيس ال ُحكومة‬
14/09/2014
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech at Cybersecurity Conference
Transcription
I want to thank Professor Joseph Klafter, the president of Tel Aviv University. I know that you
are today opening the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center. It’s a very important
one, and I think it has implications for the field and for the State of Israel and I congratulate
you for doing that.
I want to acknowledge my friend and my partner in arms, Maj. Gen. Prof. Isaac Ben Israel. I
think he was one of the first to alert me, to draw my attention to the developing field of cyber.
I acknowledge too Dr. Eviatar Matania who is the head of the National Cyber Bureau, who’s
doing very important work here to continue to transform Israel into a global cyber power; as
well as acknowledging the presence here of retired Gen. Keith Alexander, the former head of
NSA. If you don’t know what NSA is, it’s America’s 8200 unit. Bigger. But these are the finest
such units in the world. They require great minds, and I think great heart too.
Secretary Gordon England, the former US Deputy Secretary of Defense, the researchers who
are here and members of the cyber industry and defense establishments in Israel and abroad,
Dear guests,
Last month the State of Israel faced the threat of Hamas rockets and tunnels and overcame it.
Our enemies in these various terrorist organizations, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, as they fail in the
military and the terror campaigns that they launch against us, continue to try to attack us
through other ways, including in the field of cyber attacks. And that is an arena that is changing,
both here and elsewhere and it’s accelerating in dizzying pace.
The attack by our enemies on Israel’s civilian – and I stress civilian – internet infrastructure
during the recent operation. These attacks were clearly meant to disrupt the daily lives of
Israelis, to harm us, but those same attacks failed exactly in the same way as the terror
campaign, as the terror attacks, the rockets and the tunnel attacks failed.
There is a world of difference however in dealing with these attacks and dealing with rockets
and tunnels. With rockets and tunnels you know where they originate; you know who the
enemy is. You know that virtually instantaneously. But in the cyber domain there are no sirens,
and there are no instantly discernable enemies. That’s often the case. This is a space in which
there isn’t a ‘here’ and a ‘there.’ There isn’t the side of Israel, the side of Gaza, and the attacks
try to cross that line. In fact, it’s a very broad domain which is very hard to define where your
space ends and somebody else’s space, including the attackers’, begins. So, the attacks, in a
sense, always come from within. Now, we identify those attacks, and we stop them. But the fact
that the cyber attacks did not affect Israel’s daily routine and economy and they certainly did
not affect the IDF efforts – those facts derive from the fact that we have the finest minds,
literally, the finest minds in Israel’s security community and our cyber industry working to give
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‫משרד ראש הממשלה‬
THE PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE
‫مکتب رئيس ال ُحكومة‬
us those defenses. There’s an iron dome of cyber security that parallels the Iron Dome against
the rockets and this allowed us the operating space to continue fighting and of course to
continue with the daily life of Israel.
Now, a year ago, at this conference I described the threat developing in the cyber sphere
against Israel and the actions that our enemies – headed by Iran – are taking against us in that
field.
We have witnessed now, in the recent operation, Hamas’s efforts against us. We saw that
throughout the operation. But I want to make clear that the party behind the cyber attacks
against Israel is first and foremost Iran, including in the Hamas attacks. Iran supports all our
enemies; Iran is the source of most of the attacks that are launched against Israel and we are
not their only targets in the cyber field. Iran and its proxies take advantage of the security
anonymity of cyberspace to attack many other countries around the world.
Now, we are unrelenting in confronting this threat. We’re increasing our efforts to deal with a
range of cyber threats out of an understanding of the importance of cyber security to Israel’s
continued economic growth and its security.
I mention both, because both are important: We want to protect the security of our country,
the security and privacy of our citizens, but at the same time, we also identify great economic
opportunity.
We’re currently advancing a number of dramatic actions that I think will transform the cyber
field in Israel. This is a work in process for us and for our allies around the world, for every
country. Cyber is moving very rapidly. It’s changing very rapidly and you have to decide with a
certain amount of uncertainty how it is that you’re going to tackle a field as complex and as
ever-changing as cyber security.
It is a daunting task, I always find the most difficult part of any change, structural change – in
the economy or in education or in any field, in defense and in cyber defense – I find the
greatest challenge to be not the organizational challenge, not the forces that often clash –
competing interests and so on. I find the greatest challenge to be the intellectual challenge, the
conceptual challenge: what is right, what is the best thing that we should do.
Then you start to make all the adjustments for what is possible, what you can pay for, what is
politically required and so on. You make the adjustments. You trim off the edges of the main
conception. But the most important thing in any reform is the conception of what is right, what
is necessary. And in cyber this is particularly difficult for the simple reason that nobody knows.
Nobody truly knows. It's such a moving target, such an expanding and ever-changing world
that you have to make certain assumptions and go with them and probably you'll have to adjust
them as you go along. Whatever it is we do, we have to allow for changes as we go along,
especially in this field.
So we are going to make some strategic decisions and we're going to make, we are making great
investments in the goal of making a quantum leap forward in the governmental and the
national response in the cyber sphere. We are going to combine two important efforts: One, to
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THE PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE
‫مکتب رئيس ال ُحكومة‬
transform the government into an exemplar for robust cyber defense in order to protect our
digital assets and also to strengthen the trust of millions of our citizens who enjoy government
services; and second, we're going to standardize the cyber defense market in order to ensure
that the entire Israeli economy will have professional people and services in the highest level.
You do that in various fields where you need specialists. Government sets standards and some
checks so that the various services that are given – it doesn't provide necessarily the services in
all cases – but it makes sure that the standards are met to ensure that people are given what
they deserve and we intend to do this as well. Now, I think that the attacks that I've just
mentioned and many others that I haven't mentioned I think provide additional evidence that
the cyber sphere is becoming increasingly a battlefield. Israel fields it from several directions,
principle one I said originates in Iran, but not only from Iran. So let me reiterate: We are
bolstering our defenses and we are committed to maintaining Israel's position as a global cyber
power and as such we have to implement a policy which protects cyberspace as an open space
and as the basis for global growth.
I want to assure you that Israel will always know how to use its unique strengths and knowledge
to protect our country and as far as we can to protect the world's commitment to cyber growth.
Because I think that there is a tremendous responsibility that comes with power always, but
also a tremendous responsibility to assure the economic opportunities that are afforded by the
growth of the internet economy, the internet world. The internet of things, the internet of
people, all of that creates tremendous opportunities for growth, and that growth, the increase
of productivity for billions of people: instant communications, transfer of funds, the movement
of ideas, the movement of capital, the movement of initiative, or enterprise – all of that is under
risk by cyber attackers who have the capacity to inflict increasing damage, and the attacker
always has the advantage as you well know. And so we have to work at the same time as we
integrate into this modern world, as we provide entrepreneurs for this modern world, we have
to work at providing security for this great change.
I believe that this is a tremendous engine of economic growth because I don't think there's a
person on Earth who's not going to need cyber security. I don't think there is a nation on Earth
that is not going to need cyber security. Some of them violate that security left and right, but
every country and every citizen of this planet will need cyber security and this will be the
century where cyber security will either be achieved or we will lose the tremendous
opportunities that face humanity. I think long before the term cyber became known and
commonplace, Israeli companies developed the first cyber technology: the first firewall, several
of the first antivirus technologies. All these were developed here, and over the past several
years we've seen a veritable explosion of start-up companies that are breaking new ground in
dealing with a range of threats using innovative technologies and defense solutions.
I think you can see proof of this that over the last nine months alone, twenty Israeli start-up
companies have raised more than 170 million dollars. The investors aren't doing this for
charity. They know why they're here and I think you know why you're here and we welcome
you in that spirit because we think that there are tremendous opportunities for real needs for
the civilized countries, real needs for their citizens and real economic opportunities that come
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‫משרד ראש הממשלה‬
THE PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE
‫مکتب رئيس ال ُحكومة‬
out of these needs. Because people's dependence on cyber keeps increasing and so is the
necessity to offer cyber defense. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that cyber defense
solutions will serve as the essential basis for human development and economic growth in this
century. I think it's happening before our eyes and everything that you see, these curves that
seem to reach into the stratosphere, they are going to continue. They're not going to stop,
providing we solve this problem or at least control this problem or mitigate it.
And in light of these developments, three years ago we determined this area to be a top priority
in our nation's future and we're building an Israeli cyber environment with an eye to the longterm. Israel R&D will continue to be at the forefront of many years to come thanks to the
strategic investment in the industry by the government and the private sector, both in human
resources and in academia. And this event I think marks a perfect example of this partnership. I
think it demonstrates the importance of working together because when you're dealing with
cyber, you have to deal with the private sector, with academia and with the government. And
what we believe is that we can fashion this growth by a unique system that integrates the three
in a very, very determined and purposeful way. The research center which is being launched
here today as a joint initiative of the National Cyber Bureau and Tel Aviv University, under the
leadership of Professor Isaac Ben Israel and with an investment of tens of millions of shekels, I
think it embodies the understanding of the unique interdisciplinary nature of the cyber field and
the significance of the connection between people and computers, between this software, that
hardware – it has to keep evolving and changing.
We also have a flagship project, the establishment of the national cyber campus. Now here is a
bit of copywriting, which is brilliant. It's called "Cyber Spark". It's a cyber-park. It's called Cyber
Spark and it's situated in Beersheba where we're moving – General Alexander, we're moving
our NSA right into that campus so we have academia, government, well, security, and private
investors all within a range of 200 meters one from each other. Just in the same place. There is
still a value, even in the cyber world, for people to actually be able to meet one another and
exchange ideas, even face-to-face. That is still important. And that is, I think, is fast becoming a
hub of global innovation and I think Beersheba will become a very, very important cyber city in
the years to come. It's already becoming that.
We are now establishing a center for applied cyber research at Ben Gurion University in
Beersheba, and we're working to establish the national Cyber Event Readiness Team, CERT,
which will become – well, it's important, very important for the protection of Israel, but it's also
I think a magnet on campus and it will have its own reverberations into the economic
enterprises that are attached to it.
In order to strengthen the industry, just a few weeks ago, the government decided, adopted a
resolution regarding special tax benefits for companies that would establish cyber activities in
the framework of Cyber Spark so you now have tax benefits. I think there are other benefits,
but I want you to have all the benefits because one of the things we want to see is your
partnership. We know that it's virtually impossible to prevent, to create delineation of space
where our common enemies are operating from and our own space. But at the same time,
there's every reason to incorporate our partnerships in that same spirit. If the cyberspace unites
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‫משרד ראש הממשלה‬
THE PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE
‫مکتب رئيس ال ُحكومة‬
all of us, then let's unite to protect the cyberspace. And that is why I'm so proud to be here and
that is why I welcome you to Israel. I hope you look around, see if what I'm saying makes sense
and if it is, invest in Israeli cyber.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
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