TEL AVIV, Israel, Feb. 16, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- With the
accelerated transition to remote work, cloud use, and the use of
online payments, the number and cost of cyber-attacks on
individuals, private companies and states has dramatically
increased. The IMPROVATE Israel-UAE-Eastern Europe Cybersecurity
Conference presented groundbreaking Israeli technologies in the
field of cybersecurity, and also defense against circulation of
fake news.
The keynote speaker at the conference was Garry Kasparov,
a world chess champion, human rights activist and author, who is
the founder of the Renew Democracy Initiative. Kasparov recently
joined the Advisory Board of IMPROVATE, which connects technology
and innovation companies and governments and new markets.
Kasparov spoke about a number of topics, including his
involvement in the hit Netflix series The Queen's Gambit,
the connection between chess and artificial intelligence,
human-machine collaboration, his involvement in the AI and cyber
fields, and joining IMPROVATE's Advisory Board.
"IMPROVATE works to solve problems and I have been solving
problems my entire life," Kasparov said. IMPROVATE's work
connecting startups to governments is particularly critical at this
point in history, he continued. "It's a very important to improve
the global climate of innovations by helping startups to present
their ideas straight to potential customers, to the top of the food
chain, and I think it also helps governments to look through a new
lens."
Talking about his involvement in the popular Netflix series, The
Queen's Gambit, Kasparov said he was very happy to see that a
serious program about chess had become one of the most-viewed TV
series in the world and revealed that director Scott Frank had offered him to play the role of
Vasily Borgov. "I recognized that spending three months locked up
in this process would be virtually impossible. Instead, I
suggested that I would be a consultant and I would
reconstruct the atmosphere of the chess tournament and guarantee
that the quality of the games would be nearly perfect…I have to say
the phenomenal success of this series was a big surprise and
dramatically improved the image of the game of chess."
Kasparov noted that the conference fell the day after the
25th anniversary of his first match with IBM's "Deep
Blue" program, which he said was a turning point in his life and
made him realize that the future was in human-machine
collaboration: "It was like the writing on the wall and my idea
was, if we cannot beat them, we should join them. We have to try to
combine human creativity and the brute force of machines. For the
past quarter of a century, I've been promoting the idea of
human-machine collaboration."
Commenting on the perceived dangers of Artificial Intelligence,
Kasparov said: "There is an army of doomsayers saying that we have
no future because the future will belong to the machines. I see no
shred of evidence of this coming in the foreseeable future."
Irina Nevzlin, IMPROVATE Founder and Chair: IMPROVATE's
mission is for governments to have access and the ability to
implement amazing technological innovations created every day
to make the lives of the citizens better. Cybersecurity was never
more acute than during this crisis when the majority of people
found themselves working from their home computers and with
increasing amounts of cyber-attacks by foreign dictatorships and by
other groups."
Israel's Minister of
Science, Hili Tropper said the
recently signed Abraham Accords peace agreement with the UAE
would enable "progress in the fields of science, innovation, cyber,
and to connect, collaborate and make the world a better place."
UAE officials, bankers and investors who participated in the
conference said there was massive potential for collaborations
between Israel and the UAE in the
cyber sector and beyond. Sheikha Hend
Faisal Al Qasimi, an Emirati royal, businesswoman and
philanthropist, revealed that some 250 Israeli companies had
already been working in the UAE for the last 10 years and that
since the signing of the Abraham Accords this was being made
public. Sheika Al Qasimi said that
Israeli companies would find partners in the UAE if they have good
products to offer. "Both countries are relatively young and have a
lot of aspirations to put themselves out there,"
Eitan Na'eh, Israel's Head of Mission in the UAE said
that there was a great deal of synergy between Israel and the UAE, in terms of technology in
general and especially in the fields of AI and cyber. He noted that
the UAE is a technologically advanced country that has just sent a
probe to orbit around Mars. "Israel is one of the hi-tech and cyber
capitals of the world and the UAE is looking for cooperation with
Israeli companies."
Ayman Al-Awadhi, Group
Managing Director, The Corporate Group, said: "The UAE is a
melting pot destination for advanced IT and cybersecurity companies
from around the world to showcase their capabilities, and
Israel as the global number one in
startups, advanced technologies and cybersecurity is welcome to tap
into this vibrant region in which there are a lot of business
opportunities."
Mohammed Mulla, Business Development
Director at Emirates NBD said banks need to look at cyber
security to have a future in the world. "That's how critical I
believe cybersecurity is," he said. Mulla
revealed that Emirates NBD has concluded a preliminary agreement
with Bank Hapoalim, and already has an agreement with Bank
Leumi. "We aim to be the bank of choice for any Israeli customer
looking to set up shop in the
UAE."
Maj. Gen. (Res) Amos
Gilead, Executive Director of the Institute for Policy
and Strategy (IPS), IDC Herzliya, spoke of the importance of
cyberspace in the modern battlefield. I cannot imagine
any future war without cyber… In order to win the next war, we
need to be the best in three dimensions of cyber – offensive,
intelligence and defense."
Former Bulgarian President Rosen said that in many areas
of cyber, Israel is the number one
country in the world. "My message to Israeli companies is that
there is so much demand for your product, so engage with us."
IMPROVATE CEO Ronit Hasin
Hochman said: "Israel
is a cyber power and has a lot to offer the world. IMPROVATE is
proud to promote Israeli companies that are the forefront of the
cyber sector and connect them with governments and businesses
world-wide. I would like to welcome Garry Kasparov, a global
authority on AI and cyber to the Advisory Board of IMPROVATE.
Having Garry on board is major step forward to achieving
IMPROVATE's goals in the sector."
Cyber companies presenting at the conference:
Pcysys delivers PenTera, the automated network
penetration testing platform that assesses and reduces corporate
cyber security risks. From a small start-up Pcysys become the
market leader with hundreds of customers worldwide. Pcysys CEO
Amitai Ratzon spoke about the
revolution of Automated Security Validation.
Cyber Observer is the premier critical controls
monitoring (CCM) solution that simplifies the way cybersecurity
tools are monitored and managed. Shimon Becker, VP Product
and Co-Founder of Cyber Observer, spoke about Continuous Controls
Monitoring for End-to-End Cybersecurity Visibility.
Cyabra, a pioneering startup in the field of Truth-Tech,
enables brands to conduct in-depth analysis of social media
narratives to detect authenticity and reach true audiences. Dan
Brahmy, CEO and Co-founder at Cyabra spoke about disinformation and
its "Snowball Effect".
CybeReady Learning Solutions autonomous learning
platform makes cyber security awareness training easy, effective
and frictionless. CybeReady's fully-managed solution has proven to
change employee behavior and reduce the human element risk in
hundreds of enterprises worldwide. Mike
Polatsek, Co-Founder and CSO at CybeReady Learning Solutions
spoke about readiness in a single click.
Toka helps trusted government, law enforcement, and
security agencies keep citizens safe and defend against terror and
crime by advising governments on building an integrated cyber
defense and by developing cutting-edge and lawful
intelligence-gathering tools. Brigadier General (Res.) Yaron Rosen, a former Chief of Israel Defense
Forces Cyber Staff, and Co-founder & President of Toka spoke
about why and how nations should build and strengthen their cyber
capacities.
Focus Telecom was founded in 1995 and since then has
been a leading supplier of time synchronization solutions and an
innovator in GPS security, developing unique, patented technologies
that protect critical infrastructure against attacks on their
Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) systems. Charlie Ferreira, head of International Business
Development at Focus Telecom spoke about how Trustable,
Resilient Time is critical to network operations and security.
Safe-T is a provider of Zero Trust Access solutions
which mitigate attacks on enterprises' business-critical services
and sensitive data. Eitan
Bremler, Co-founder and VP Corporate Development at
Safe-T spoke about how cybersecurity is lagging dangerously behind
the needs of the new world of corporate resources access.
RavenDB is a distributed document database based on the
Document Model and featuring ACID transactions and blazing
performance. It works to reduce operational overhead reducing a
company's release cycle and time to market. Oren Eini, CEO of RavenDB, spoke about Usability
as a Security Strategy.
Axonius is a cybersecurity asset management platform
that gives organizations a comprehensive asset inventory, uncovers
security gaps, and automatically validates and enforces security
policies. Dean Sysman, Co-founder
and CEO of Axonius, spoke about battling cybersecurity's Number One
Enemy: Time.
Cybowall presented a software product with a wide
range of breach detection technologies, powered by artificial
intelligence and orchestration capabilities.
Ziv Simhon, VP of Business
Development & Sales at Cybowall, spoke about cyber security
solutions for small and medium sized businesses.
Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEOgKYacj5A
Photo -
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