Israel and the Cyber Threat: How the Startup Nation Became a Global Cyber Power

The most detailed and comprehensive examination to show how tiny Israel grew to be a global civil and military cyber power and offer the first detailed proposal for an Israeli National Cyber Strategy.Israel is the subject of numerous cyber attacks from foreign adversaries. As a consequence, it has built an extremely sophisticated cyber security system. Indeed, Israel is now regarded as one of the top cyber powers in the world. In Israel and the Cyber Threat, Charles D. ("Chuck") Freilich, Matthew S. Cohen, and Gabi Siboni provide a detailed and comprehensive study of Israel's cyber strategy, tracing it from its origins to the present. They analyze Israel's highly advanced civil and military cyber capabilities and organizational structures to offer insights into what other countries can learn from Israel's experience. To achieve this, they explore how and why Israel has been able to build a remarkable cyber ecosystem and turn itself, despite its small size, into a global cyber power. The book further examines the major cyber threats facing Israel, including the most in-depth look at Iranian cyber policies and attacks; Israel's defensive and offensive capabilities and the primary attacks it has conducted; capacity building; international cooperation; and the impact of Israel's strategic culture on its cyber prowess. By placing Israel's actions in the realm of international relations theory, the book sheds light on many of the major questions in the field regarding cyber policies.The most authoritative work to date on Israeli cyber strategy, this book provides a comprehensive look at the major actions Israel has taken in cyberspace. It also places them in the broader context of global cyber developments to help readers understand state behavior in cyberspace.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgements Bios Glossary Prologue Introduction Part I: My Home is No Longer My Castle; the Global Cyber Threat Chapter 1: Understanding the Global Cyber Threat Chapter 2: Primary Cyber Attacks Around the World Chapter 3: Goldilocks and Other Cyber Quandaries Part II: War by Other Means; the Cyber Threat to Israel Chapter 4: The Overall Cyber Threat to Israel Chapter 5: The Iranian Cyber Threat Part III: A Napkin That Changed History; Israel's Cyber Response Chapter 6: Strategic Culture and National Security Strategy Chapter 8: National Capacity Building Chapter 9: International Cyber Cooperation Chapter 10: The Military Cyber Strategy Part IV: The Way Forward Chapter 11: Conclusions - and Some Answers to the Cyber Quandaries Chapter 12: A Comprehensive Israeli Cyber Strategy Appendix: Types of Cyber-Attacks List of Interviews Bibliography Footnotes Index

About the Author :
Charles D. ("Chuck") Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel and long-time senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center, teaches political science at Columbia University, New York University, and Tel Aviv University. He is the author of Zion's Dilemmas: How Israel Makes National Security Policy (2012) and Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change (Oxford, 2018 and Modan Press in Hebrew). Freilich is the senior editor at the Israel Journal for Foreign Affairs, has published numerous academic articles and over 170 op-eds, and appears frequently on US, Israeli and international TV and radio stations. Matthew S. Cohen is Assistant Professor of Practice at Merrimack College. He was previously employed at the federal, state, and local levels in America, focused on policy work. Cohen's research is focused on emerging security threats. He has published on cyber-space, international relations theory, Israeli security policy, delegitimization and lawfare, Turkish-Israeli relations, Turkish politics, and Russian politics. Gabi Siboni is a former colonel in the Israel Defense Forces, a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, and a consultant to the IDF and other Israeli defense organizations, including as the chief methodologist of the IDF's Research Center for Force Deployment and Buildup. He is the coauthor of National Strategy in Cyberspace (2016), Regulation in Cyberspace (2018), Guidelines for Israel's National Security Strategy (2019), and Cybersecurity and Legal-Regulatory Aspects (2021). Siboni was the director of both the Military and Strategic Affairs and Cyber Security Programs at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), where he also edited the Institute's academic journals in these areas.

Review :
Cyber has become the equivalent of a silent nuclear weapon, the ultimate weapon that can simply take countries apart. Israel has a remarkable story to tell in the cyber realm, civil and military, and this ground-breaking study tells it better than any other. A must read for anyone interested in cyber and Israel. Cyber has become one of the top threats facing Israel today and it has built a remarkable civil cyber ecosystem and strong military capabilities in response. This book is the most comprehensive, exhaustive and up-to-date analysis of the issue, with critically important conclusions and recommendations for policy. Highly recommended. This book is the result of detailed research about Israel's cyber arena, from its early steps to its current global lead, a story about people, strategies and politics. As one who led part of this story, wrote about it and supported this research effort, it is essential reading for scholars. This is a startling, comprehensive, and deeply researched look at one of the top cybersecurity programs in the world. Israel is easily among the top five countries in terms of capability and depth of research, and this volume is a gold standard of accuracy and judgement. This book is a pioneering contribution to the nascent field of comparative cyber studies. It will be the authoritative reference on cybersecurity in Israel for years to come. The authors draw on impressive detail, grounded in practical experience, to show how Israel's unique strategic culture informs its cyber policies. Suffice it to say that Freilich, Cohen and Siboni's book...Their work, in short, is a must read for anyone, professional or layperson, interested in this particular dimension of Israel's national security experience. Israel and the Cyber Threat is a timely book that deserves a wide audience in the United States and its allies. For those looking for a detailed strategic and pragmatic approach to cybersecurity, this is their book. Israel and the cyber threat: How the startup nation became a cyber power traces the steps by which that goal was attained. It explains why and how Israel became a world-class cyber power and demonstrates the various advantages (economic, military, and diplomatic) that it has thereby gained. Finally, from what is obviously a sense of deep national commitment, the authors, Charles Freilich, Matthew Cohen, and Gabi Siboni, also itemize the additional organizational, entrepreneurial, and educational steps required to sustain the upward trajectory of success.