CyGov — A Holistic State Level Solution to Cyber Attacks
The world is connected more than ever and more and more devices keeps being added every day. While such connectivity brings an unprecedented convenience to our daily lives, it also leaves individuals and governments increasingly vulnerable by being reliant upon remote technology and communication networks. Given our growing dependency on these networks they have become a prime target for those that wish to harm our societies.
The cost of cyber security deficiencies is significant. Globally, there are >$500B of lost GDP due to cyber attacks.
But this is just the beginning, cyber vulnerabilities are exploited regularly with over 10,000,000 significant attacks daily across the world. Moreover, the risk is growing at a pace that is difficult to manage. Cyber attacks are increasing over 50% Year over Year creating increased financial and physical damage.
Local and national governments have seen entire entities disrupted and paralyzed in zero time. Other government have unwillingly exposed personal information of millions of citizens. Beyond the direct costs, the results are lost confidence in government institutions.
What keeps me awake at night
In a recent interview former Nato Commander Adm. Stavridi was asked what keeps him awake at night
When I was the supreme allied commander, the thing that kept me awake at night was not Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the Balkans, piracy or a restless Russia — it was cyber. In the cyber world, we face the greatest discrepancy between the level of threat (high, especially against our financial, transportation and information sectors) and the level of preparation (low).
Even though political and administrative bodies across the globe are aware of the general vulnerability to cyber warfare, they still struggle to understand the magnitude of the risk to their local infrastructure.
So what to do?
Well, there are universal cyber principles that can significantly mitigate these massive threats:
A centralized and consolidated body (data sharing) that exceeds the ability of any individual entity
The ability to rapidly evolve, faster than the threats- and move faster than the current decentralized structures of governments today
The focus on customization vs. generic programs
Israel the Cyber Nation
Left with little other choice, Israel have out of necessity turned into the worlds most experienced and successful country in this battle:
Israel was the first country in the world to establish a centralized National Cyber Agency, dedicated to coordinating, consolidating and defeating cyber threats
Israel have developed unique ecosystems with the most rapid evolution of the latest and greatest technologies coming from the military and private institutions.
With an unrivaled ability to customize and integrate solutions, most of the advanced training of cyber experts who know how to think both as the attacker and the defender have emerged in Israel.
CyGov
Enter CyGov . CyGov was co-founded by Brig. Gen. (res.) Eli Ben-Meir, who retired from the IDF earlier this year after a three-decade army career that included stints as chief intelligence officer and head of the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Research and Analysis Division.
CyGov consist of some of the best cyber professionals that Israel has produced. Leveraging their vast experience in intelligence in general and cyber intelligence in particular, both on the attacking side as well as the defending side,
CyGov has set out to help governments to better protect themselves based on the Israeli National Cyber Agency’s model.
Based on the Israeli National Cyber Agency’s model, CyGov is providing a holistic state level solution to cyber attacks. By a sophisticated cyber assessment tool coupled with real time intelligence, CyGov assist government, states and government institution with a centralized approach with data sharing amongst the different stake holders in order to better protect its citizens.
I’ve been deeply involved in CyGov since its inception and given the massive threat cyber attacks poses to our societies, our daily lives coupled with the impressive talents involved in CyGov, we at Sparklabs Global Ventures decided to invest in CyGov earlier this year.
The cyber threat to hour society is massive, it’s targets and methods keeps on changing all the time. It is time that governments around the world steps it up in order to better protect its citizens.
