Israel Police Insp.-Gen. Yohanan Danino on Monday announced the creation
of a 60-person unit to tackle cyber crime that will be funded with assistance
from the Treasury.
Speaking at the annual International Conference on
Homeland Security in Tel Aviv, Danino said that he participated in an Interpol
conference in Rome last week in which cyber crime was identified as an issue
that threatens the whole world.
“Terrorist groups and organized crime
have a lot in common,” he explained.
“They [both] develop from local into
global organizations, from hierarchical into networked organizations, and their
level of sophistication is growing.”
Jürgen Stock, vice president of the
German Federal Criminal Police Office, told the conference that it is becoming
increasingly difficult to identify the perpetrators of cyber crime, and warned
that the “increased networking of IT systems can very quickly lead to global
epidemics with enormous financial impact.”
In Germany alone, attacks on
the Internet are carried out every two seconds, Stock said, “but the motivations
for such attacks remain unclear.”
For security authorities to keep pace
with cyber criminals, a joint effort must be made by governmental and
non-governmental actors at a national and international level, Stock
declared.
He said that Europol’s new Cyber Crime Center and Interpol’s
proposed Digital Crime Center would “fill the gaps that exist at a national
level in many countries, as far as cyber crime is concerned.”
Also
Monday, Jerusalem Venture Partners announced that it will create Israel’s
first-ever private cyber security incubator as part of the chief scientist’s
incubator program. JVP will establish the incubator in Beersheba in cooperation
with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s technology transfer company.
It
expects the incubator to begin operations as early as the beginning of
2013.
“The initiative comes in the wake of rising cyber threats and
increasing attacks on critical infrastructure in Israel and around the world,”
said JVP founder and chairman Erel Margalit, who is running in the Labor Party
primaries ahead of the January elections.
“Israel’s leadership in the
area of cyber security is a strategic asset for the country, and we can leverage
it not only for security purposes, but also economically and socially.
Establishing the Beersheba incubator alongside a social incubator and other
cultural hotspots can create cultural and social change along with a thousand
new jobs,” Margalit continued.
|