Graduates from IDF 8200 unit visit New York, London

The meetings presented new startups, among them one that deals with preventing automatic face recognition.

By OMRI RON
New York Delegation (photo credit: Courtesy)
New York Delegation
(photo credit: Courtesy)
The 8200 unit graduate foundation sent two delegations to New York and London, with the goal of promoting women and entrepreneurs and help them reinforce the companies they manage.
The delegation left for New York under the Umbrella of the W2W program, which is designed to create a new selection of leaders for Israel, while also helping women advance in their career and achieve senior management positions, as well as carrying out projects on their own.
The delegation presented several projects. One among them protects a person's features from facial recognition programs scanning photos they appear in, such as on Facebook and Instagram. This is done by adding an extra layer to the picture which makes it difficult for such programs to identify a person's face, while not preventing the human eyes from seeing the picture, thus making it more difficult for surveillance companies to collect information on internet users using the pictures they upload.
Other projects include an A.I. software which can manage solar energy fields more efficiently than humans and a phone app that listens in on board room meetings and translates the ideas brought up in them into 'To do' tasks so that employees won't forget.
The London delegation was organized within the EISP 8200 start-up acceleration program, which with the help of volunteers helps Israeli Entrepreneurs build companies specializing in technology. In this delegation there were some companies with a developed product and a customer base interested in meeting new people who could provide international development opportunities.
According to Karen Hershcovitz, manager and founder of the W2W program: "In the business capitals of the world everything takes place at a high pace. We also experienced accelerated procedures during our visits. For example, one of the participants from the field of law was invited to a personal meeting with a senior partner at one of the biggest law firms in New York, with the goal of creating a cooperation between the two. Some connections were created between the investors and the entrepreneurs."
8200 is an elite IDF intelligence unit whose graduates are leaders in the hi-tech field. Its role in the IDF mainly deals with the realms of cyber security, collecting signal intelligence and code decryption, and are renowned for being selected among many recruits for their intelligence and technical skills.


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