February 6, 2012, Updated March 22, 2015

Even with a reported 1,000 cyber attacks every minute directed at Israeli web sites, Israel is seen as one of the top three countries in cyber-readiness according to a McAfee survey.

The cyber defense poll gave Israel, Finland and Sweden a score of 4.5 out of five for their ability to cope with cyber threats and attacks. No country scored a perfect five.

The US, UK, Germany, Spain, France, Netherlands and Estonia were given four out of five points. And China, Brazil and Mexico were listed as being among the least able to defend themselves against emerging cyber attacks.

Isaac Ben-Israel, senior security advisor to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, is quoted in the report as saying that Israel sees 1,000 cyber attacks every minute.

“The hacktivist group Anonymous carries out lots of attacks but they don’t cause much damage. The real threat is from states and major crime organizations,” said Ben-Israel.

“Cyber security is not about saving information or data, but about something deeper than that. It’s about securing different life systems regulated by computers. In Israel, we realized this ten years ago,” said Ben-Israel. “A cyber war can inflict the same type of damage as a conventional war. If you want to hit a country severely, you hit its power and water supplies. Cyber technology can do this without firing a single bullet.”

The report calls for greater efforts be made to improve cross-border law enforcement. It also highlighted the need for sharing of information globally as necessary to keeping ahead of threats.

“Cybercriminals route their connection through multiple different countries,” said McAfee CTO Raj Samani. “The bad guys share information – we need to do the same as well.”

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