Representatives from Israel and the United States signed an agreement for a real-time information-sharing platform to thwart cyber security threats on Tuesday, June 21, 2016. The occasion was Cyber Week, the Sixth Annual International Cybersecurity Conference held at Tel Aviv University. The conference is organized by TAU’sBlavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center, the Israeli National Cyber Bureau, and Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Alejandro Mayorkas, Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, announced the news of a joint declaration on Monday in his opening remarks at the weeklong conference, which drew some 5,000 government, industry, and academic representatives from 45 countries.

“One of the lessons we learned is to go it alone is precarious, and working together makes us stronger,” Mayorkas told an audience of cyber experts. “The cybersecurity threat is borderless. Information must be shared.”

“We believe in sharing information between companies, sectors, and countries because the threat is so global,” said Eviatar Matania, a signatory of the agreement and Head of Israel’sNational Cyber Bureau. “If we share information, we can prevent the threat from propagating.” Matania said the agreement would allow the two countries to automatically compile, screen, and share information, all in “near real time.”

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During Cyber Week, cybersecurity professionals from around the world convene with policymakers, entrepreneurs, investors, and academics to discuss cybersecurity threats facing the international community and the latest advances in cyber technology.

“Along with its interdisciplinary scope, TAU offers a unique mix of conditions for success,” said TAU President Prof. Joseph Klafter at the opening ceremony. “It has a proven record of innovation and entrepreneurship, deep-rooted connections with the high-tech industry and defense agencies, and an extensive national and international network of partner organizations.”

“We are moving to an era in which almost all of our lives are handled online, so cyber threats will become more complex and more integrated in our lives,” said Dr. Eran Toch of theDepartment of Industrial Engineering at TAU’s Faculty of Engineering at a symposium on academia’s contribution to cyber security. “Cyber threats will go beyond the idea of hackers. It will include governments, companies, our social networks, and so forth. Cyber security will be more than just protecting computers and networks. It will ask complex multidisciplinary questions, like how to protect genetic information while still being able to use it.

“TAU has an enormous opportunity to help humanity understand cyber threats and protect against them. It is truly a unique place to investigate these questions, as it is a major center of multidisciplinary thinking and engineering,” Toch added.

Among the week’s events were the first-ever Cyber Storm Startup Competition, as well as individual roundtable discussions on commercial, academic, and governmental cybersecurity cooperation between Israel and Spain, Singapore, China, India, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

Source: AFTAU

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