Cybertech Global 2023: cyber leaders of Israel, the UAE, Morocco and Bahrain share the stage for a first-of-its-kind discussion

A fascinating talk about trust, collaboration, courage, and doing things different

Cybertech Global 2023: cyber leaders of Israel, the UAE, Morocco and Bahrain share the stage for a first-of-its-kind discussion

All photos by Gilad Kavalerchik

Some of the many fruits of the Abraham Accords were demonstrated on the main stage of Cybertech Global 2023 in Tel Aviv this morning, with a first-of-its-kind discussion between cyber leaders of Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and the US.

Gabi Portnoy, Director General of the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD), was joined on stage by H.E. Mohamed al Kuwaiti, Head of Cyber Security, UAE; Sheikh Salman bin Mohammed bin Abdullah al Khalifa, CEO of the National Cyber Security Center, Bahrain; and Brig. Gen. El Mostafa Rabii, Director General, DGSSI and Director of maCERT, Morocco; and Robert Silvers, Undersecretary for Policy, Department of Homeland Security, US. The panel was moderated by Aviram Atzaba, INCD’s Executive Director for Int’l Cooperation.

“We are a team now, this partnership is a great achievement,” said Rabii. “Because of the existence of criminals of various groups, cyber threats have no borders – and I think the same goes for us. We need to get our teams to work together on concrete cases, to foster trust between us.”

Al Khalifa: “The first word needed for success is trust, and what you see in front of you today is trust. We’ve all been working together behind the scene but now we’re past that stage, and I think we now want to see this trust in action.”

“I will add that for success we also need advanced technology, to leverage and use it. And we’re blessed with having many companies that are focusing on this,” said al Kuwaiti, who also discussed the depths to which the Israeli-Emirati cyber cooperation has achieved.

“We need to acknowledge that the old way of doing cybersecurity has not gotten us to where we need to be, so we need to try to do things differently, because otherwise we will just get the same results,” said Silvers.

“With this group, if the Abraham Accords took one thing – it’s courage. It was a sharp break of doing things the old way, and look at what it has achieved.  I think we need the courage to break from prior practices, and I think that this group here is ready to take this on.”

Portnoy: “The two key factors for success are trust and trust. In this group, the trust was there from the beginning, like a group of friends that hasn’t met in years. We speak here openly, we share the same interests – improving our countries’ cybersecurity, but also a vision to have a secure region and maybe affect the whole Middle East with regards to cybersecurity. There is a lot of courage in this room, and a lot of trust. But we’re not alone: there’s industry and the private sector – major stakeholders in what we need to do understand how to collaborate better.”

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