The Battle for Your Computer

CHAPTER 20The Cybersecurity Industry Snowball Effect—Elements of the Israeli Ecosystem

“From a historical perspective, Check Point created a giant industry. There are over 40 cybercompanies nowadays run by ex‐employees,” says Gil Shwed with undisguised pride. “When Check Point started out, every role had to be built from scratch. There was nowhere else from which we could take people who understood the field. Nowadays there's already a huge ecosystem. When you've got around 10,000 Check Point graduates wandering around Israel, there's a lot of knowledge that each can bring and contribute to the market.”

This phenomenon is not unique to the cyberindustry, and other countries also have clusters of industries that have often emerged thanks to one successful company. Richard Stiennon, founder of the analytics company IT‐Harvest, also points this out. “Israel has a booming cyberdefense ecosystem,” he says in a conversation with me, “and that ecosystem was created by Check Point.” Nir Zuk, who rose up the ranks of Check Point and eventually became its most powerful commercial competitor, hammers the point home: “Unit 8200 and similar units in the army provide a talented workforce of engineers, not necessarily cyberpeople. The real reason for the power of the Israeli cybersecurity industry is the snowball effect that Check Point launched.”

Good companies, Zuk explains, create chain reactions: “These companies produce good people, who produce new companies. In Israel, Check Point started ...