http://www.ibtimes.com/selling-secrecy-israel-turning-worlds-cyber-problems-economic-opportunities-1353117
By Vanessa O'Brien
International Business Times
July 19, 2013
TEL AVIV, Israel -- Israel conceals some of its best-kept secrets deep in
the inhospitable Negev Desert: its nuclear research center near Dimona,
its advanced agricultural research programs, its base for Unit 8200 of the
army’s intelligence corps.
Now, the heat-drenched region’s largest city, Beer Sheva, is hoping to
turn the world’s need for secrecy into new shekels. The country’s
first-ever private cybersecurity incubator is being established in Beer
Sheva under a partnership between the Israeli venture capital firm
Jerusalem Venture Partners and Ben Gurion University. The incubator is set
to open its doors in October in a facility built at a cost of 50 million
new shekels (NIS; US$12.5 million) in a new technology park conveniently
located near the Israel Defence Force’s likewise new computer technology
and intelligence base in the city, which opened for business last week.
The Israeli government estimates that more than 10,000 technology
employees will move south to the cybersecurity center, and the Israeli
Cabinet this week announced a major additional investment (NIS 500
million, or US $125 million) for economic development, housing, services
and infrastructure improvements to accommodate the growth. Jerusalem
Venture Partners has meanwhile begun searching for cyber startups to
nurture. By 2020, JVP projects a NIS 1.4 to 1.7 billion increase in
economic activity in the Negev each year, most of it in the realm of the
cyber industry. But those figures, like most cited by the government and
its partners regarding the plans for the Negev, are not fully quantified;
other economic benefits are typically described as “several billion” or
“hundreds of millions,” the proponents being characteristically cagey
about disclosing too many details.
[...]
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