One of the largest parts of the Israeli Defence Force is its cyber and cyber intelligence units.
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Israel is a very small community. Practically an island. They're completely surrounded by nations that they cannot cross to. Israel developed creativity to compensate for its lack of resources. And it is a country that needs to conduct constant surveillance on their neighbors, as a country which is under constant annihilation threat by other nations. Israel understood many years ago that going into wars and launching massive military operations bare almost unbearable prices. First in terms of human lives, in terms of economic costs, in terms of international legitimacy. So cyber was the right answer for many things that Israel needed to do.
Israel's private cybersecurity industry is essentially the child of Israeli Military. Actually, the whole cyber industry relies on the knowledge gathered by people service in Israel's different security agencies in the military.
There are approximately more than 20,000 cyber soldiers now serving Israel. The country has taken an initiative to turn a city named Beersheba into Silicon Valley. The military-industrial cyber complex in Beersheba is said to be the largest infrastructure project in Israel's history which costs around 5 bn USD.
The Israeli military is the largest HR organization in the world because practically they start scanning the layers of Israeli population and position divided people in right places. So someone who is 18 years of age get exposed to the state of the art technologies to the highly advanced paradigms and methodologies. After their military service from a business point of view, somebody has already conducted the screening.
The Initial screening and recruitment process for the IDF's(Israeli Defence Force) most elite cyber units actually begins much earlier. In 2013, the Ministry Of Defence helped to create a national program for high school students interested in learning more about the realm of cyber.Unit 8200 which is considered as the most elite cyber force of Israel recruits mainly school teenagers and kids who are strong enough to deal with technological challenges in the cyber realm. Because research says teenagers can think more out of the box than the adults. This elite cyber and intelligence division doesn't just provide a defence. In fact, they are responsible for one of the most aggressive cyber attacks in history such as sabotaging the Natanz Nuclear Facility in Iran by destroying centrifuges which are widely believed to be a joint operation of Unit 8200 and NSA(National Security Agency) of USA. In 2014, forty-three members of 8200 wrote an open letter to the prime minister refusing to serve because of the unit's widespread use of surveillance. Despite its shadowy reputation, one thing is clear that skills and methods are soldiers learning are extremely profitable in the free market.
According to HBO's Vice correspondent Ben Ferguson, White Hat LTD is a successful cyber company of Israel which is founded by a former IDF's cyber soldier. The main job of this company is to hack companies and VIPs around the world in various ways like phishing and sell those data to the darknet. Top auto security companies are also Israeli though there aren't cars made in Israel and they're all parts of a wave of cyber innovation that's sweeping across the country. About this Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out in a conference about cybersecurity in Tel Aviv,"A few years ago I set the goal for Israel becoming one of the top 5 cybersecurity powers in the world. It's a goal we've met. Today Israel receives roughly one-fifth of the world's global private investment in cybersecurity. "
In fact, Israel receives more venture capital funds per person than any other county in the world that has become known as the startup nation.
The author is a student at Department of Criminology, University Of Dhaka
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