Help for the Hacked

The Fellowship | February 19, 2019

A woman talking on the phone while looking into the distance. — Foreign Country Trying to Interfere in Israeli Election

Because of the many threats she faces — threats from all directions, including via technology — Israel has focused a good portion of her military might on cyberspace. And now, our friends at Ynet News tell us, veterans of the IDF’s capable computer units are now manning what is a global first — an emergency response center that focuses on cyber attacks:

Israel has launched a cyber hotline, staffed mostly by veterans of military computing units, to enable businesses and private individuals to report suspected hacking and receive real-time solutions.

The 119 call-in number to the Computer Emergency Response Centre (CERT) is being billed by Israel and cyber experts as a world first.

“Our job is to mitigate the damage as quickly as possible, to learn about the threats and to spread the knowledge where relevant,” CERT director Lavy Shtokhamer told Reuters at the facility in the southern high-tech hub city of Be’er Sheva.

“A cyber-attack may not be limited only to property or financial damage. It can also threaten lives…”

At the center, 20 responder terminals face a bank of huge screens, one of which shows a world map with cyber-attacks rendered as meteor-like strikes on Israel and the country of origin of computer servers used by the hackers.