CYBER CAPABILITIES AND NATIONAL POWER: A Net Assessment 69
6. Israel
Israel was one of the rst countries to identify cyber-
space as a potential threat to its national security,
and started to address the issue more than 20 years
ago. Initially it perceived that the main threat was
of cyber aacks against its critical national infra-
structure, but that perception has evolved to include
aacks against other nationally signicant targets.
Technological and geopolitical changes have driven
various organisational reforms in the way Israel’s
national-security system responds to cyber threats,
a process culminating in 2018 with the formal estab-
lishment of the Israeli National Cyber Directorate
(INCD) within the oce of the prime minister. The
country has also drafted a formal national cyber
strategy that includes close cooperation between
government, the private sector and academia, and
with international partners. This cooperation, led
by the INCD, has created both a vibrant cyber eco-
system and a relatively high level of preparedness
and resilience within the private sector. On oensive
cyber operations, lile has been publicly avowed,
but notable aacks that have been aributed to
Israel include the use of the Stuxnet worm against
Iran, between 2008 and 2010, and an aack against
an Iranian port in 2020. Based on such evidence, it
appears that Israel has a well-developed capacity for
oensive cyber operations and is prepared to under-
take them in a wide range of circumstances.
List of acronyms
IDF Israel Defense Forces
INCD Israeli National Cyber Directorate
NISA National Information Security Authority
Strategy and doctrine
It was around the year 2000 when Israel identied cyber-
space as an emerging domain of threat to its national
security, and 2002 when the government decided
to establish a dedicated agency for the protection of
critical information infrastructure.
1
Cyber security
became a much more explicit national-security objec-
tive in November 2010, when Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu ordered the formation of a special team to
formulate a national strategy for placing Israel among
the top ve leading countries in the cyber-security eld.
Labelled the National Cyber Initiative, the work was
led by Professor Isaac Ben Israel, head of the National
Council for Research and Development, whose team
comprised sta from key agencies involved with cyber
security. Their main practical recommendation was the
need for a new governmental cyber-security organisa-
tion that would coordinate all policy eorts in order to
promote national capability in cyberspace and improve
Israel’s preparedness to deal with cyber threats.
2
The rst National Cyber Security Strategy, published
in 2017, set out the vision that Israel would become ‘a
leading nation in harnessing cyberspace as an engine
of economic growth, social welfare and national secu-
rity’. The focus was mostly on the security aspect,
where the aim was that of ‘keeping cyberspace safe and
… confronting the various cyber threats, in accordance
