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Beer-Sheva Rapidly Emerges as a Global Cyber Center

Beer-Sheva Rapidly Emerges as a Global Cyber Center

April 23, 2015

Business & Management, Homeland & Cyber Security

Excerpted from Haaretz — This past year has set the “capital of the Negev” firmly on course toward becoming an important center of research and development for the global computer and network security industry. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is playing a key role in this “desert storm” of technogical and business development.

In January, Brandeis International Business School and T3 Consulting Group published research that received much attention in the foreign media for ranking Beer-Sheva one of the seven global cities forecast to emerge as important high-tech centers.

The future is here: Beer-Sheva's Advanced Technologies Park

The future is here: Beer-Sheva’s Advanced Technologies Park

In February, a second building was inaugurated in the Advanced Technologies Park (ATP) just steps from BGU’s Marcus Family Campus. The compound is designed to serve the many cyber start-ups and multinationals expected to set up headquarters or R&D operations in the city. It will eventually number 15 buildings.

Not long afterward, the new park boasted its first exit: The giant online payment company, PayPal, announced in March it was buying the Israeli start-up CyActive, whose software can predict how malicious software will develop and offer companies detection and prevention, and will be setting up its cyber R&D operations in the city. CyActive was backed by the venture capital fund JVP, the German electronics giant Siemens, Ben-Gurion University and CyberArk Software, an Israeli company that went public on Nasdaq in September.

At the same time, an agreement has been signed among the finance and defense ministries and the Israel Land Authority to transfer army bases from central Israel to the south that will give another major boost to Beer-Sheva as a world cyber capital. The agreement includes bases that house military signal intelligence facilities, including the world-renowned 8200 unit, that will have a new home on the perimeter of the ATP in Beer-Sheva beginning in 2020.

Companies already operating in the ATP include foreign and local firms such as Ness Technologies, Deutsche Telecom, RAD, Lockheed Martin, Elbit Systems, and EMC, as well as a cyber incubator run by JVP, the venture capital firm. The National Cyber Bureau, the newly created agency that advises the government on topics related to cyber policies, will also be housed there in a few months.

BGU recently signed research contracts valued at tens of millions of shekels with the National Cyber Bureau, opening up new specialized training programs in cyber areas. A business environment that encompasses the private market, the army and BGU is, indeed, shaping up in the Negev.