The Battle for Your Computer

CHAPTER 14The Israeli Silicon Valley—Small State, Big Data

“Israel's cybersecurity industry is worth as much as Silicon Valley's,” says Dino Boukouris, co‐founder of U.S. consulting firm Momentum Cyber—and he's not alone.

There was a time when any comparison between this tiny and diverse Middle Eastern state, encircled by existential threats, and the world's richest and most prosperous superpower would have sounded ridiculous. But over the years, and especially the past decade, the State of Israel has managed to create a whole raft of capabilities, products, and services that have transformed it into one of the central and dominant players in the global cybersecurity market. A Tel Aviv University study in January 2021 mapped out the major hubs of the global cybersecurity industry and found three: Silicon Valley, Washington D.C.—and Israel.¹ “There's not much difference between Israel and Silicon Valley,” agrees Shlomo Kramer, adding that “it's a world‐class industry.” Kobi Samboursky, co‐founder of Glilot Capital Partners, which specializes in cybersecurity firms, goes even further and says, “In the past, Israel was second only to California, and today its industry is probably even better than California's.” Assaf Rappaport takes a similar view: “Israel's ecosystem is very strong, globally. Silicon Valley might be its only serious competitor.”

In June 2021, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think tank, sorted the world's leading cybersecurity powers ...