David Petraeus and Nadav Zafrir
David Petraeus and Nadav Zafrirצילום: Gilad Cavalerchic

Former CIA Director Gen (Ret) David H. Petraeus spoke at Tel Aviv's 2018 CyberTech, the world's largest Cyber Technology conference outside the United States.

Representatives of companies and governments from 80 countries, representatives from dozens of leading venture capital funds from Asia and the West and hundreds of journalists are attending the conference.

"According to various foreign publications, our cooperation has significantly harmed Iran's nuclear program, so I am glad to sit here with Nadav (referring to Brigadier Gen.Nadav Zafrir, ed.). The bad guys show more creativity and ability to perform in a more complicated form."

Petraeus
Petraeusצילום: Gilad Cavalerchic

Petraeus is concerned mostly with non-state actors that have the ability to take down electrical and other infrastructures of entire countries. Data integrity is also a concern, he points out; not necessarily theft and misuse of data, but altering it, the skill to cause something to seem real.

"The Technological developments are outrunning our strategic imagination." he said, and are "creating a formidable challenge." From Petraeus's experience, "simple legislation is not able to be quick enough in order to keep up with the rapid changes in the threat posture."

Former Commander of Israel's highly selective IDF Intelligence and Cyber Unit 8200 and Co-Founder and CEO of Team8 Brig. Gen. (Ret) Nadav Zafrir said "The threat has become much more imminent. One of the reasons is the world becoming much more connected, enhancing the hackers' capacity. At Team8 we wish to find a solution that combines the background of an organization like the IDF and the attacker's philosophy, trying to think like him. We look for the next crises, for what will occur when different scenarios of technological advancement become a reality."

Petraeus continued: "The presence of many investors in Israel, including my own presence is to receive the latest news first hand. It is not just a startup nation, but a scale-up nation, due to impressive foundations that had been laid here by previous generations of the industry. Counties which have good cyber capabilities reach far beyond their size and abilities. Not just maritime, air, and land. The huge arena is constantly advancing; the request for partners and allies is tremendous. Israel is a small country in all aspects, but it is a cyber super power. The partnership between the United States and Israel has given the option to cope together against the counter threats, which is extremely important. The collaboration reaches new heights time and time again, far beyond what is being published in the media. It is a new domain of warfare, which will become a fully combatted command.

"We must engage in the integrated comprehensive approach, not just the parameters or minimize the attacks; it's not enough to use AI enabled verification, but it has to be all combined and overseen; full-time monitoring."

Both the exhibition and the conference are being held at Tel Aviv's Convention Center January 29th-31st, and present strategic solutions for various challenges. The solutions are designed to face cyber-attacks, which threaten a wide variety of sectors like finance, security, traffic, services, research and development, energy, production, health, government, communication, and more.

The conference performs as a platform for business relations between companies and professionals, strengthens existing alliances and forms new relations between investors, industry seniors, government officials, cyber experts, the military community, decision makers, hackers, opinion leaders in innovation, start-up companies, corporate heads, directors of information systems, ambassadors, attaches, formal delegations, and more.

Petraeus at CyberTech 2018
Petraeus at CyberTech 2018צילום: Gilad Cavalerchic