Abigail Klein Leichman
October 17, 2018

When the New York City Economic Development Corporation planned its Cyber NYC suite of programs launched earlier this month, it chose Israeli partners to head of two of the initial five programs intended to propel the city forward in cybersecurity innovation.

Cyber NYC’s planned Global Cyber Center innovation hub will be established and managed early next year by SOSA, a Tel Aviv-based global innovation platform.

The 15,000-square-foot, eight-story center in the Chelsea neighborhood will offer structured programming for corporations and industry-specific events that will facilitate strategic investments, commercialization and implementation of cyber technologies in New York’s business ecosystem, and will house startup co-working space and a Cyber NYC Members Club.

Tel Aviv-headquartered SOSA will establish and manage Cyber NYC’s Global Cyber Center. Photo via Facebook

Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) was chosen to help the NYCEDC develop an accelerator, Hub.NYC, where enterprise cybersecurity companies will be connected with advisers and customers.

The program, hosted in a nearly 100,000-square-foot building in the SoHo neighborhood, will use JVP’s existing model of public-private cyber incubators in Beersheva and Jerusalem.

Local institutes of higher learning also will participate in the venture, including Cornell Tech, an engineering campus in Manhattan anchored by the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute, a joint venture between Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

The city is investing $30 million, while private investors are expected to pump an additional $70 million into Cyber NYC.

According to SOSA, “The complexity and cost of cyber-crime has increased at an unprecedented scale, reaching as much as $600 billion – about 0.8 percent of global GDP and creating a true challenge for all types of organizations in facing and protecting against cyber threats.”

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