Important aspects of the country’s efforts to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus are networked and are vulnerable to a variety of cyber attacks, Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) Chief Yigal Unna said on Tuesday. Speaking as part of a video conference Cybertech event, Unna said that the INCD has been in overdrive to protect a wide range of the health industry’s exponentially expanded online exposure in the age of corona. He described a sudden shift in which the numerous new networked processes for tracking, contacting and managing sick and potentially sick people exploded in size and required an equally massive expansion in cyber defense. Some of these processes reach an additional level of complexity when systems for industries that were producing classified weaponry for the IDF are converting portions of their efforts to working in the more exposed and open public health sector. A launch of one major program that the Health Ministry is using to send out alerts relating to coronavirus was delayed for almost a week to address cyber defense and privacy concerns, noted Unna. Next, Unna discussed the directorate's involvement in publicizing guidelines for securing Zoom video conferences, an application whose use has skyrocketed to cope with social distancing measures being used to combat the coronavirus, but which limit physical interactions between people. He said that securing Zoom is even more important, with potentially hundreds of thousands of people about to use it to connect with family members in connection with the Passover Seder, which Jews celebrate on Wednesday night. Unna did take a victory lap over “Op-Israel,” the name given to a campaign of cyber-attacks carried out by hackers against Israel annually around the Passover holiday. ..
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