IAI’s Holistic Approach for Countering Cyber Threat Challenges

An ever-growing reliance upon cyberspace places governments, military and commercial businesses exposed to cyber fraud and sabotage. Emerging cyber threats, which are aimed against nation states, critical infrastructures, enterprises and private citizens, create an inherent asymmetry between attackers and defenders. The attackers – cyber criminals, insurgents and hacktivists – benefit from the ease of concealing and disguising identities within cyberspace, widespread availability of data encryption capabilities and the proliferation of cyber-attack capabilities, whereas the defenders are forced to detect advanced, low-signal threats which, even after being detected, are seldom able to track their origin, and as such the defenders are unable to retaliate against the assailant.

Skilled hackers, terror organisations and states are currently developing sophisticated cyber attacks, implementing different aggressor techniques and methods, which together form well-orchestrated attacks in order to achieve their desired security breaches. These highly invested targeted threats or APT (advanced persistent threats) are built to exploit the organisation vulnerabilities and stealthily prepare for malicious execution of a “kill chain” at the right moment.

Cyber Inteligence

It is now more and more evident that an efficient cyber methodology has to be able to combine early warning capabilities with active defence tools. It is essential to detect and track the threats as early as possible – raising the need for sophisticated cyber intelligence capabilities as an essential part of a nation’s cyber defence concept.

Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has accumulated more than six decades of expertise in innovative technological defense and Intelligence systems. IAI’s rich legacy in defence situation rooms, signal intelligence, communication and electronic warfare (EW) enables it to master and confront cyber challenges as a modern EW – applying advanced algorithms and tools to identify, and generate cyber situational awareness, allowing to detect and mitigate sophisticated cyber attacks.

In order to meet the ever-growing cyber challenges, IAI has designed a holistic approach, incorporating cyber intelligence, cyber forensics and cyber security capabilities into a single unified framework. This approach allows an effective and efficient utilization of resources, creates a comprehensive cyber intelligence and defence picture, and provides cyberspace intervention as needed. The framework is designed as an open, modular, flexible and hierarchical system: subsets and elements of the framework can be implemented as stand-alone components and/or integrated with other, indigenous or third-party systems.

As part of its innovative approach, IAI has established cyber centres of excellence, researching complex challenges in cyberspace and developing prototypes of advanced and innovative cyber solutions. These prototypes are then productised by IAI’s experienced scientists, engineers and security professionals, into customer-grade products and solutions, coupled with the appropriate standard operating procedures (SOPs). IAI’s global network of maintenance and assistance ensures that all the proper training and support is provided to the customer.

IAI is investing a lot of effort into aiding customers with their capability build-up in the areas of cyber intelligence, defence and forensics. To that effect, IAI has developed a Cyber Range & Cyber Forensics Lab, combining best of breed commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) capabilities with novel statistical capabilities, as well as cyber forensics, operations research and impact analysis models.

IAI concluded year 2014 with cyber-solutions contracts totaling several millions of dollars. Two significant contracts were signed with strategic, defence, foreign customers.

IAI has defined cyber as a strategic domain and one of the company’s core areas of activity. IAI develops advanced cyber solutions for intelligence, protection, monitoring identification and accessibility. These sophisticated capabilities are made possible by unique technologies developed by IAI’s research, development and excellence centres. The company is offering to its customers numerous channels and dimensions for handling the various, constantly evolving cyber threats.

“The cyber arena requires reliable, strong and experienced solutions’ provider in order to allow appropriate, constant managing. We’ve harnessed the best minds and technologies to create a new approach, enabling our customers for optimal management of today’s and tomorrow’s cyber challenges,” said Esti Peshin, Director of Cyber Programs at IAI.