Report: Israel well prepared for cyber war
According to SDA-McAfee report, Jewish state experiences 1,000 cyber attacks per minute, but is most prepared to defend itself and deal with them. On the other hand, Israel initiates most attacks against its enemies – alongside Russia, China
Israel ranked first in the report, alongside Sweden and Finland, out of 23 countries examined, leaving the United States, Australia, Brazil, Japan and Mexico (which ranked last) behind.
- For full coverage of the cyber attack on Israel click here
According to Lars Nicander, director of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies (CATS) at the Swedish National Defense College, Israel, China and Russia are also "the most consistently offensive countries."
First place: Finland, Israel and Sweden
When discussing preparedness for a cyber attack, there is a difference between an offensive on a State's critical systems and infrastructures and an attack on websites of companies like El Al and the Stock Exchange and small websites which are hacked on a daily basis. These types of attacks are seen as vandalism.
Last month's cyber attack, in which a Saudi hacker leaked Israeli credit card numbers on the Web, was also considered a minor criminal incident which caused insignificant damage.
Hierarchy of threats
The security experts who authored the report interviewed Prof. Isaac Ben-Israel, chairman of the Israel National Council for Research and Development and the Israel Space Agency, who led a team that submitted recommendations to the Israeli government on how to prepare for the threat of a cyber attack and was the senior cyber-security advisor to the prime minister.
Prof. Ben-Israel says in the report that Israel sees 1,000 cyber attacks every minute, but that there is a hierarchy of threats.
"The hacktivist group Anonymous carries out lots of attacks, but they don't cause much damage. The real threat is from states and major crime organizations," he says.
Three weeks ago, the Knesset discussed Israel's preparedness for a cyber attack several times, following the exposure of credit card numbers by a Saudi hacker and following repeated attacks on Israeli websites.
Knesset Member Ronit Tirosh (Kadima) said that the potential damage from a cyber attack was as serious as a missile attack on Israel. Security experts argued that the exposure of personal details was more serious that the leaking of credit card numbers.
According to one of the security experts, Israel must investigate why websites lacking data protection collect and keep citizens' personal details.
Ben-Israel notes in the report that as part of the cyber authority's preparations, Israel drew up a list of major infrastructures and changes were made in legislation in order to enforce online protection in the private sector as well.
