IBM to expand Beersheba cybersecurity lab
IBM is expanding a cybersecurity lab in Beersheba, the company announced last week.
The lab is part of the research-oriented Cyber Security Center of Excellence, which has been running for four years in collaboration with the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
The Negev security team began as a limited pilot, and is now maturing full force, with its new offices able to hold three times the number of employees.
“Our Beersheba center is contributing cutting-edge technologies to IBM’s security division, including detection of insider threats, cyber protection for automotives, identity analytics via behavioral biometrics and more,” Cyber Security Center of Excellence director Dr. Yaron Wolfsthal told The Jerusalem Post. “These innovative technologies go into IBM products and help protect IBM clients and partners worldwide.”
IBM’s cybersecurity division joins a booming tech landscape in the desert university town, as the elite IDF Unit 8200 plans to eventually move there.
Some technologies that will be researched at the new IBM site include “Internet of things” cyber protection.
The lab is located in the Gav-Yam Negev office park, and it was inaugurated last week. IBM is not recruiting at the moment but is preparing to enlarge its physical facility, a spokesperson said.
“Our cyber lab in Beersheba is developing advanced protection technologies whose integration into the products of the security division is of high importance for the company’s global operations,” said Marc van Zadelhoff, the general manager of IBM’s security division, at the center’s inauguration ceremony last week.
The IBM research center in Haifa is already the company’s largest R&D facility outside the US, with hundreds of employees based there. IBM spends $5 billion to $6b. each year on research.
The company’s security division operates in 133 countries with 8,000 employees globally, according to an IBM representative. The young division – established six years ago – is increasingly lucrative, with sales of $2b. per year.
The company employs thousands of Israelis across the country and it had nearly $80b. in revenue last year.