During the week of January 17, 2010, Israeli mobile ad tech company Mobixell announced that it bought Internet firm 724 Solutions. A new report indicated that most Israeli hi-tech companies are planning to hire this year and the Google breach from mainland China was further analyzed. For these stories and the rest of this week’s 10 headlines, see below.

Cleantech
1. Sunday Solar to Build Large Solar Array on “Damaged” Negev Land

Investment and Economy
2. Mobixell buys Web firm 724 Solutions

3. Israel’s PowerSines seeks IPO abroad in H1

4. Most high-tech companies plan to hire people this year

Information Technology
5. Google vs. China: The Tip of the Cyberwar

6. Never Mind the Valley: Here’s Israel

7. Women in Technology: Rony Ross, Panorama Software (Interview)

Miscellaneous
8. Want an MBA from an entrepreneurial hot spot? Look to Israel.

9. ‘Ajami’ on short list for Oscar nomination

10. Tuition-Free University Gains a Following

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Google Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Amichai Shulman of the data security company Imperva in Israel has been paying close attention to the security breach and after first suggesting last week that the likely attack methods “were sending mail containing malware to Google employees” or “through a vulnerability in Google’s web servers” strongly questions a claim by McAfee that Internet Explorer had a major role in the attack.

Shulman’s skepticism is based on three main points. The first is that it is unlikely that Google employees would be using IE and not Chrome which is Google’s browser. The second is that the sophistication of the attack requires network and not browser vulnerabilities:

“To execute an attack this sophisticated, it likely occurred as a result of spear phishing Google employees to gain access to Google users credentials. A hacker would have to jump through many hoops inside an internal network. This requires network—not browser—vulnerabilities so that the attacker can communicate with malware inside Google’s internal network.”

Shulman’s third point is that despite the likeliness of the problem being network weaknesses, countries, including France and Germany, are now recommending that citizens use other browsers instead of Internet Explorer.

Considering these three points, Shulman asks the interesting question, “Could this be a clever way to boost Google Chrome downloads?”

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During the week of January 3, 2010, Dot Hill bought storage company Cloverleaf for $12.5 million. China’s Sanhua invested in Israeli solar firm, HelioFocus and new vulnerabilities were discovered in Twitter and Google Calendar. For these stories and more, check below for this week’s 9 Israel-related headlines.

Cleantech
1. Are Energy Advances in Israel in Parallel With Those Abroad?

2. China’s Sanhua invests in Israeli solar firm

Investments
3. Dot Hill confirms storage virtualization acquisition

4. Clean tech gets big piece of venture-capital funding

Information Technology
5. 3D sensor co PrimeSense attracts Vegas attention

6. Vulnerabilities Discovered In Twitter, Google Calendar

Miscellaneous
7. Researcher: Computers in schools do not improve students’ results

8. One third of high-tech incubator companies succeeded

9. Animating the Na’vi with an Israeli swagger

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During the week of December 6, 2009, Israeli President Shimon Peres launched his own YouTube channel to encourage peaceful dialogue and announced that he will be going to the Copenhagen climate conference representing Israel. Information security company, Promisec thrived during the recession and Israel as a startup nation was looked at in a different light. For these stories and more, check below for this week’s 11 headlines.

Cleantech
1. Israeli Cleantech Heats Up

2. Peres to represent Israel at Copenhagen climate negotiations

Investments
3. BIRD to invest $4.2m. in six new projects

4. Playtech buys GTS

Information Technology
5. Harris: Pageonce shows you don’t need to be big to be global

6. Information security co Promisec shines in dark times: Internet threats can overwhelm regular antivirus solutions

7. How to sift through Twitter’s noise? MyTweetSense, FriendBinder give it a go

8. Cyber hacking could be a thing of the past

Miscellaneous
9. Peres gets viral, dives into social media with presidential YouTube channel

10. Home cooking

11. Fail Factors – Why Startups Die: The Israeli Illusion

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According to VeriSign CTO, Kenneth Silva, who recently spoke in Seoul about the likely mobile device threats in 2010,

“An attack on the mobile device operating system will affect the phone contacts, mobile banking log-ins and passwords and any other valuable information stored on the device”

Smartphone sales are expected to beat PC sales for the first time in 2011.

The opportunities for cyber criminals to penetrate mobile devices are the results of:

• More phone applications needing updates which can pose an opening for phishing scams
• An increase in jail broken phones, which compromises the operating system as an example.

Silva explains that these vulnerabilities can lead to “deliberate Denial of Service attacks, extortion, and corporate espionage as threats for 2010″ and has as such become a national priority for several countries including Israel, the U.S. and the U.K

Research by Discretix, an embedded security solutions company, indicates that smartphones already make up 25% of the market and might reach 40% market share in the next 5 years.

In addition to finding the same threats posed by applications and an open OS that VeriSign did, Discretix has also listed:

Some of the new OSs (e.g. Android) are open source, missing the traditional safeguards and closed environment of other real time operating systems

Also the devices are multi-use with massive storage capacity, moving data and applications freely between the enterprise and the home

Despite the seriousness of these threats, a survey conducted by security software firm Trend Micro that was released in August 2009 indicated that 44% of mobile phone users considered Web surfing on a smartphone to be “as safe, if not safer, than doing so on their PC” and “only 23 percent of smartphone owners use security software already installed on their smartphones.”

Discretix was one of the fastest growing Israeli companies in 2008 and 2009 according to Deloitte Brightman Almagor Zohar and will deliver Open Mobile Alliance DRM capabilities to HTC Windows Mobile and Google Android handsets.

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During the week of September 13, 2009, Better Place and Renault announced that the first electric vehicles will arrive in Israel in 2011. Perfecto Mobile, now known as Nexperience, raised $7 million and Commtouch released a report about a sharp increase in the amount of new viruses. For these stories and more, check out this week’s 10 Israel-related headlines below.

Cleantech
1. Cleantech: Selfishness Sells

2. Renault electric vehicle to roll into Israel in 2011

Investment and Economy
3. Israel teaches the world a lesson in economics

4. Exclusive: Startup Perfecto Mobile Raises $7M for Device-testing Service

Information Technology
5. How Intel turned failure into success

6. Chi-X Chooses IBM for High-Speed Messaging

7. Yodlee Fights Online Payment Fraud Using Actimize, a NICE Company, Real-Time Analytics Technology

8. All is not well with virus protection

Miscellaneous
9. Is Your Cell Phone Melting Your Brain? Not Yet.

10. U2, Coldplay coming to Israel

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During the week of August 23, 2009, Chevron and BrightSource announced the groundbreaking for a solar-steam project that will power one of Chevron’s oil fields in California. News continued to spread about Web application delivery provider, Crescendo Networks’ planned move to California while Israel’s IT market is expected to reach about $6.3 billion in 2013. For these stories and the rest of this week’s headlines, check below.

Cleantech
1. Chevron taps solar-powered steam to get more oil

2. Mazzetti Nash Lipsey Burch and Elysium partner to offer climate change consulting services

Investment
3. Siemens buys 40% stake in Arava Power

4. Stellar Start-Ups: The network’s the thing for hi-tech deals

5. Israel Information Technology Market Is Projected To Grow At A Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) Of 6% Over The Forecast Period To Reach Around US$6.3bn In 2013

Information Technology
6. Mass SQL injection attacks still scaling up

7. Research: 80% of Web users running unpatched versions of Flash/Acrobat

8. Web app delivery vendor Crescendo comes to US

Miscellaneous
9. Israel Moves Toward Energy Independence

10. Incredimail Cracks the $10 Barrier: Where to from Here?

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The antivirus application features:

- VirusFree & VirusFree Pro: Inspects and cleans Android smartphones from malware, viruses, SMS spam and suspect applications to secure device integrity.

- FindR: Tracks and locates lost/stolen phones, enables remote memory clearing to protect data privacy.

- CheckMate: Manages the security rating of Android and issues warnings on suspect security profiles.

Though there is only one known threat to Android devices, the company is expecting  (as is the head of Google Android’s security team) that as the Android platform becomes more popular and widely-used, it will become more of a target for attacks and threats.

It also expects that though Android isn’t ready for the enterprise yet, eventually the enterprise will push using Android and is currently working on an enterprise version to be released in 2010 that will include “the ability to centrally manage and update company smartphones and devices.”

The suite, which was downloaded over 100,000 times during its beta trial and takes advantage of Java Virtual Machine (JVM) technology,  is available for download on the company’s site for $4.99 a year.

Company Facts

Founded in 2009

Located in Tel Aviv, Israel

Eran Pfeffer, CEO, co-founder

Dror Shalev, CTO, co-founder and former Check Point security researcher

Omri Sigelman, VP of Marketing, co-founder

Applications: VirusFree Pro, VirusFree, FindR, CheckMate

DroidSecurity is currently looking for funding

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During the past week, word continued to spread about IBM’s latest data-masking technology. Israel’s IQWind raised $500k from foreign investors while in Q2 2009, Israeli high-tech companies raised a total of $279 in venture capital. For these stories and the rest of this week’s 10 Israel-related headlines, see below.

Cleantech
1. Study Says World Driver To Go “Total Electric” By 2030

2. Israeli IQWind raises $500k from U.S. investors

Investments
3. Israeli high-tech companies raised $279m in venture capital in Q2 2009

4. Toyota looking for Israeli development

Information Technology
5. IBM develops new data-masking technology

6. Major AV engines failing to detect malware

7. TWS2009 Showcases Ten of Israel’s Most Promising Startups

8. Israeli SOX Software Innovation to Reduce Time and Cost in I-SOX Compliance Implementation

Miscellaneous
9. N-Viro launches clean soil facility in Israel

10. ‘Ghosts go through walls’

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• Check Point Software Technologies
• Tufin Technologies
• Safend, Inc
• Imperva
• Radware Inc
• Aladdin Knowledge Systems
• AlgoSec
• Cyber-Ark Software, Inc
• Promisec
• Commtouch

Hot topics expected to be discussed in depth throughout the conference are cloud computing security, conficker worm and the conflict between national security concerns online and the protection of citizen’s rights.

Though reports indicate that overall attendance at the conference this year is significantly lower than in previous years due to the state of the economy and companies cutting back, it is unclear how this has impacted participation and attendance among Israeli companies compared to past years.

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