Israel Innovation 2.0

During the week of May 31, 2009, Sunday Energy, SolarEdge and Ormat all had major announcements related to providing alternative energy in Israel, while GameGround and The Box successfully raised funds. In IT, Discretix explained the threat of bank accounts being hacked on mobile phones and Trusteer signed a contract with PSECU in England. For these stories and the rest of this week’s 15 Israel-related headlines, check below.

Cleantech
1. Sunday Energy forges new ground in Israel with Ormat

2. Israeli firm boosts performance of photovoltaic solar array

3. Exploiting Limited Resources

Investments
4. GameGround snags $4.1 million from Sequoia for gamer services

5. Investment in Green Energy Quadruples in 4 Years

6. Israel’s The Box Secures Funding from Greylock Partners to Target US and Other International Markets

Information Technology
7. PC Touch-Screen Technology Moving Beyond Curiosity

8. How much serious is the threat of hacking bank accounts via mobile phones? (Discretix)

9. PSECU Secures Web Channel with Trusteer

10. Virtualize Your Internet Connection with BufferZone

11. WatchDox Makes Document Security Simple

Miscellaneous
12. Central Park’s Tel Aviv ‘beach party’

13. Video: Microsoft’s Project Natal in action

14. Nestle producing new breakfast cereal in Sderot

15. Brain research center to be built at Hebrew University

Jeff Neal at Optionetics.com posted yesterday that information security solutions provider, Check Point Software Technologies is continuing to experience growth, including in the United States and Europe, despite the economic downturn.

According to Neal,  

“Check Point has solid fundamentals with great return on equity and a healthy cash flow. The latest earnings showed total revenues at $217.6 million, compared to $206.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. Net income was $86.5 million compared to $87.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. The company also indicated that their share repurchase program bought approximately 3.4 million shares at a total cost of $66.7 million and that they continued to experience good performance from all geographies, including the United States and Europe.”

While other companies, such as SAP Israel and Amdocs have been announcing layoffs, even back in October, Check Point was confident about its sales growth. At the time, which was after Check Point reported third-quarter results that beat estimates, Gil Shwed, the CEO, explained that security was still a sector that companies were investing in,

“We see projects being cancelled but we also see projects being initiated. Clients are buying. It’s not that the world has stopped but they are cutting costs.”

For the most part, Shwed seems to be right. Earlier this week, the UK edition of SC Magazine posted on its website, the SC Top 30: Information security overview 2009. According to the overview, which is based on an interview with Eric Domage, manager, western European security research and consulting at IDC, 

“The European security market will see growth – but at a reduced rate – and activity will not start to pick up until well into 2010.”

It goes on to mention that security software is in decline and most growth is in managed security services providers (MSSPs), which more comapnies are shifting to. Though, according to Domage, activity isn’t expected to really pick up until after 2010,

“the pressures on both customers and suppliers are likely to intensify during 2009 and on into 2010. Security chiefs are going to have to look hard at cost control and justify their spending requirements.” 

Meeting these requirements, Check Point Endpoint Security protects PCs and eliminates the need to deploy and manage multiple agents, reducing total cost of ownership and appealing to security officers. Check Point’s Endpoint Security provides end-to-end security solutions, from a firewall to anticirus protections to program control and full disk encryption. 

Check Point isn’t the only Israeli security company offering cost-saving solutions that is experiencing growth during the economic downturn, Imperva, an application data security company, had a breakout year in 2008.

Cleantech and Environment

1. ‘Israel has no plan for water economy past 2010′

2. Better Place Raises Financing for Denmark Electric Car Project

3. BrightView Secures $6 Million From Israel Cleantech Ventures and Hasso Plattner Ventures

Investments, M&A and Economy

4. Number of laid-off Israelis set new high in December

5. SAP cuts likely to reach Israel

6. MyThings Acquires ViewScore

Information Technology

7. Safend Achieves Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 2 for Sensitive Data Protection and Reaches Key Stage in FIPS 140-2 Certification Process

8. Waterfall Security Solutions to Attend the 2009 DistribuTECH Conference

9. Cordys Award-Winning Process Factory(TM) Now Available as Community Platform Free of Charge

10. IBM to expand Israeli XIV production facilities

11. How flash is changing storage (Axxana)

12. SIMCom Licenses Red Bend Software’s vCurrent(R) Mobile for Remote Software Management of M2M Wireless Devices

Web 2.0

13. Peer39 matches online content to advertiser’s message

14.  Time to Headup

15.  Interview : HYPick – hype a topic

16. Email: 2Pad Grabs Media Attachments from Your Webmail Accounts

17.  MocoSpace a Global Top 10 Social Network on Mobile

Miscellaneous

18. Mobile TV chip co Siano wins major Chinese deal

19. Free Internet-Calling Services for Cellphones (Fring)

Bonus: HYPick.com

If you want to know what the hype is– the real hype and not just what people vote on by clicking–check out HYPick.com. Founded by Oren Todoros, HYPick is the anti-Digg-type site that determines the top content based on user comments and views and not ranking, like Digg. Todoros recently sat down with Ezra Butler of LuckyStartups to discuss  HYPick. See what the hype is for yourself with this video.

You can add to Israel’s technology hype, by joining in on Israel Innovation 2.0 HYPick.com discussions, such as this one.

During the week of January 11, 2009, the war in Gaza escalated and news about Israeli tech companies continued. The biggest news of the week was that multi-touch technology company, N-Trig raised $24 million in its latest round of funding, the majority coming from Microsoft. Better Place announced its partnership to bring electric cars to Canada while Aladdin agreed to be acquired after months of talks with Vector Capital. Other information security companies, Trusteer and Commtouch also made headlines with important security threat findings. For links to these stories and more, check out the complete 12 Israel-related headlines from the week of January 11, 2009 below. 

Cleantech

1. Better Place Partners with Ontario to Bring ‘Car 2.0’ Electric Car Infrastructure to Canada

2. Eilat to host major international energy conference

Investments and M&A

3. Information security provider Aladdin is to be acquired by Vector Capital for $160 million

4. Microsoft leads $24m round for touch screen co N-trig

Information Technology

5. Phishing attack uses pop-up message on bank sites

6. Shunra Software Joins Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partners Program 

7. IDV Solutions and Eternix Announce Technology Integration for Innovative Geospatial Solutions for the Defense & Intelligence Industry

8. RiT Technologies launches Paladin environment and security management suite

9. User Generated Content Sites Breeding Ground for New Internet Security Threats Says Commtouch Trend Report 

N-Trig

10. N-trig Secures $24 Million of New Funding to Fuel Hands-on computing™ Growth in Global PC Market

11. Microsoft Betting Big on ‘Touch’

12. CyberLink and N-Trig Introduce Next-Generation Multi-Touch Enabled Applications at CES

Since Israel began its operation in Gaza a week ago, over 300 sites have fallen victim to cyberattacks. Large Israeli company sites, such as Israel Discount Bank, Ynetnews and Israel’s largest domain registration site along with small Jewish community sites, including several religious ones in the US have been targeted. The main group behind several of these attacks, though far from the only one, is the infamous Moroccan group, TeamEvil, which also hacked some of the 750-plus Israeli websites before and during the Lebanon war in 2006.

Security analysts predict that American company websites will also be attacked in the next few weeks. For an article on the topic that appeared in SC Magazine last week, Dan Kaplan interviewed Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and John Kindervag, a senior analyst with Forrester Research who both made suggestions for preventing cyberattacks:

“Warner said website operators must secure common entryways for hackers, including vulnerable programming language, forum or blog software, image programs and utilities, such as website statistic applications. In addition, they must prevent the theft of FTP credentials, which are used to access sites and load content.

John Kindervag, a senior analyst with Forrester Research, said most websites are not built with security in mind. As a result, site owners should conduct a vulnerability assessment and, if they need immediate action, install a web application firewall, which can detect anomalous behavior.”

For more on the topic and to make sure your secure, you can check out the following sites:

10 Ways to Prevent Cyberterrorism

International Cooperation Needed To Prevent Cyberterrorism

Cyber Terrorism Threat Increasing – How To Prevent A Digital 9/11

Trusteer, an Israeli security vendor, announced earlier today the availability of a free tool that allows banks to find out which malware variants and Trojans are targeting their websites and customers.

“allows IT professionals to submit their organization’s web address and see a list of malware configuration files that are designed to commit fraud against their brand. By typing their URL address into the Attack Trace search engine, users get a glimpse into the cross section of malware that is specifically aimed at their website and what the code is written to accomplish. The Trusteer Attack Trace search engine searches for leading Trojans and other attack codes including Torpig/Sinowal, WSNPOEM, and NetHell.”

- The typical malware configuration file targets around 500 financial institutions

- Big banks such as Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo and targeted by virtually all malware variants in the engine.

- International websites for known banks such as Citibank.de (Germany), ingdirect.es (Spain), barclays.pt (Portugal), and hsbc.fr (France) are extremely popular targets.

- Small local banks such as ledyardbank.com, sunflowerbank.com, and anchornetbank.com are favorite targets of many malware variants.

- Credit Unions such as, airforcefcu, ocfcu.org, redfcu.org, and teachersfcu.org are strongly targeted by various malware

- Torpig/Sinowal targets the most number of credit unions (hundreds)

Israeli data leakage protection company, Safend, has released a set of tips for how companies can keep their data safe during the Holiday season and long after. Tips include:

• Employ a Sound Auditing Process: Portable storage devices such as
  iPods, PDAs, smart phones and other mobile devices, have become pervasive
  in the workplace. Allowing your employees to use their iPods at work may
  be a good way to increase morale but it also poses a security threat.
  Knowing what devices are connecting to what endpoints will help
  administrators monitor and avoid these threats. Determining what kind –
  and how many — devices are accessing an organization’s network is the
  first step in developing an effective DLP strategy
• Access Control: To make sure that users cannot easily circumvent
  security policies, it is important to first make sure the policies in place
  are flexible enough that they don’t hinder productivity, but strong enough
  to prevent data leakage threats. This is accomplished through granular
  policies that allow administrators to block, allow or restrict access to
  data from everything from file type, device type and even specific device
  serial number.
• Encrypt Everything: Many enterprises feel that they have covered all
  their security bases with the implementation of security policies, employee
  training and endpoint protection technology and are reluctant to invest in
  another product or add another level of security. However, encryption is
  essential to ensure that unauthorized users cannot access data in the case
  of loss or theft.

Earlier this month Deloitte listed Safend as one Israel’s 50 fastest growing technology companies based on its revenues from the past 5 years. Safend’s products include: SafendProtector, SafendEncryptor and SafendReporter.

Another Israeli information security company, Promisec Ltd., was recently covered on Israel Innovation 2.0 for a video it posted on YouTube that also raises these points.

About the author: Lisa Damast is the Membership Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel. Any questions or inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics.

Over the past year, Promisec Ltd., an internal network security solutions company with an office in Israel, has been using YouTube as a tool to explain the benefits and features of its products and the simplicity of how to use them. It’s latest promotional video, “Ask Yourself These Questions,” successfully caught my attention because of the important security questions regarding laptops, PCs and servers it brings up at the beginning of the video that every network manager should ask himself or herself and know the answers to.

Some of the questions asked include:
1. Could someone be running any file sharing applications?
2. Has any user attached an unauthorized external storage device?
3. Does every endpoint and server have the latest SP or hot fix?
4. Will I face IT and Security budget cuts that will limit visibility to new threats?

Check it out:

Promisec also offers a free Internal Threat Encyclopedia reference guide on its website that is worth taking a look at.

About the author: Lisa Damast currently resides in Israel. Any questions or inquiries regarding this blog can be idirected to her via email at Lisa (at) israelinnovation20 (dot) com. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and headlines among other topics.

Commtouch, an information security company based in Israel, announced yesterday the release of its Q3 Email Threats Trends Report and the report’s emphasis on the latest threat of spammers hiding their reputations. According to Amir Lev, CTO of Commtouch,

“The growing trend is for spammers to adopt the good reputation built up by other sites and senders in order to bypass reputation-based email filters. They accomplish this in a number of ways, including stealing legitimate email senders’ credentials, or compromising email account enrollment processes and automatically registering thousands of free email accounts.”

Other highlights of the report include:

- “Spam levels throughout the third quarter averaged 77%, as in the previous quarter, ranging from a low of 61% to a peak of 94% of all email

- Over half of zombies/bots change their IP address daily

- Malware masqueraded as legitimate newsletters such as CNN Daily Top 10 or IE7 Browser updates

- New spam tactics during the quarter included: links to Flash (.swf) files, ASCII art spam, and hidden Bayesian poisoning text combined with HTML tricks.”

Commtouch’s main product is its Zero-Hour software based on the company’s Recurrent Pattern Detection (RPD) technology that searches for recurring patterns and indicates spam that way. Other Israeli security companies besides Commtouch include, Check Point, PineApp, Sentrigo and Aladdin, among many others.

Commtouch was featured in depth on Israel Innovation 2.0 in October 2007 and has increasingly become a significant Israeli company to watch in IT.

About the author: Lisa Damast currently resides in Israel. Any questions or inquiries regarding this blog can be directed to her via email at lisa (at) israelinnovation20 (dot) com. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and headlines among other topics.

Though there wasn’t a lot of technology news coming from Israel during the week of September 28, 2008, the cleantech industry received a significant amount of the coverage that it did receive. The big news in the industry was that the future of cleantech is still promising and that the climate does impact cleantech investment. Widget company, Gigya raised funds and much of SanDisk’s value has to do with MSystems, Ltd. For the full stories on these and more, check below for this week’s 10 Israel-related technology headlines from the week of September 28, 2008.

Cleantech
1. Clean technologies to create business opportunities, say panelists

2. Accelerated business response to climate change drives cleantech investment

3. Cleantech investment breaks all-time record

Investments
4. JVP Media V holds $100m first closing

5. Gigya Raises $11 Million Series C Round

Information Technology
6. Sandbox security versus the evil Web (Trusteer and Check Point)

7. New Chip Technology Is Crucial to SanDisk’s Value (MSystems, Ltd)

Miscellaneous
8. PicScout Continues to Guard Visual Content Copyright

9. Stellar Startups: The spirit of a startup

10. Israel’s population in New Year: 7.3 million, 76% Jewish

About the author: Lisa Damast is the Membership Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel. Any questions or inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics.

*About the Weekly Headlines image: The Star of David in the image was found on Flickr and is used under the Creative Commons license. It was originally uploaded by Flickr member, zeevveez. The overall Weekly Headlines image was designed by Lisa Damast.