Despite the recent spate of cyber attacks on Israeli websites, Israel was named
as one of the three most cyber secure countries in the world in a recent study,
according to a report by the Financial Times on Monday.
According to the
study, published by the Brussels-based Security and Defense Agenda think tank,
Israel, Finland and Sweden had the best Internet defenses around their public
and private websites.
Israeli websites are attacked 1,000 times a minute
on the Internet, the study said, noting that national strategies for web
defenses have been drawn up and implemented.
In recent weeks, Arab
hackers have struck a range of private and public Israeli sites, using mostly
DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks, which take sites offline but do no
damage to servers.
On occasions, government-run sites that provide
information to the public – such as the Fire and Rescue Service and Anti- Drug
Authority sites – were hacked and their homepages defaced with anti-Israel
rhetoric.
This month, the National Cyber Defense Authority was officially
launched.
Operating under the Prime Minister’s Office, the Authority is
tasked with coordinating Internet defenses for Israeli websites.
Other
countries that fared well in the study were France, Germany, and the UK, the
Financial Times reported.
India, Mexico and Brazil scored poorly in the
report.