CybersecurityCybersecurity paradigm shift: from reaction to prediction and prevention

The New York Times, Wells Fargo, Sony, even the Pentagon, have all been subjected to cyberattacks. The intensification of cyberattacks on corporations and government agencies has led to a surge of new companies offering cybersecurity solutions, and Israel boasts some of the world’s top cybersecurity firms.

As Udi Mokady, CEO of CyberArk Software, Israel’s largest private cybersecurity company, explains, “Everybody understands that you buy Swiss watches from Switzerland and information security from Israel.” Israel’s investment in cybersecurity is a result of the physical and cyber threats to which the country has been exposed.

“It’s a big part of our edge, and the customers know it,” says the CEO, who served in a military intelligence unit and holds degrees in law and management.

The Jewish Voice reports that Mokady co-founded CyberArk in 1999 before the term “cyber-attack” became mainstream. The firm now employs 300 people around the world.

Israel21C reports that CyberArk’s client list consists of more than 1,400 customers, including more than 40 percent of the Fortune 100 and seventeen of the world’s twenty largest banks.

CyberArk develops software that “locks up” critical IT infrastructure, and monitors and records all data interactions by authorized users on-premise, off-premise, or in the cloud. Prior to CyberArk’s founding, investment dollars generally supported startups with a focus on defensive solutions, but now firms like CyberArk, providers of proactive and full-service cyber solutions, are of growing interest of tech investors. “Given the amount of sophisticated attacks out there, the border between insider and outsider has disappeared,” Mokady says. This has led to greater demand for “inside-out” solutions.

“CyberArk was the first to recognize the significant vulnerability of privileged access accounts,” says Nimrod Kozlovsky, of Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), one of CyberArk’s main backers, along with Goldman Sachs. “A large part of most attacks we see relate to abusing privileged accounts and exploiting them to gain access to sensitive resources.”

Kozlovsky is head of JVP’s new Cyber Labs incubator launched May 2012 in collaboration with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev under the Office of Israeli Chief Scientist. JVP says it is committed to nurturing tech startups focusing on proactive cybersecurity solutions. “There is a common recognition now that existing products for cybersecurity are limited in scope,” Kozlovsky told Israel21c. “We see a paradigm shift in security systems from reacting after an attack is identified to proactive systems that can predict and prevent an attack.”

General Electric (GE) has signed on as an investor in one of the incubator’s early startups.

In its most recent annual survey, CyberArk found that 80 percent of nearly 1,000 global executives and IT security professionals consider cyberthreats a greater risk to their country than physical attacks. Fifty-one percent of those surveyed believe that a cyberattacker is currently or has infiltrated their corporate network within the past year.

Cyber attacks are becoming more complex and the attackers vary from nation states and terror groups to corporations and individuals. A proactive approach to cybersecurity is the focus of leading security firms. Mokady attributes CyberArk’s success to the company’s ability to be innovative and adaptable to new threats.

“Though we are no longer a startup, there is an Israeli agility and ‘never say never’ approach that was critical from day one, but is a very important element even today because we are facing a complex and ever-changing problem,” he says. “Cyber warfare is no longer a hacker sitting in his living room, but a sophisticated process financed by nation states.”