Turkey has blocked access to the instant messaging platform Discord following a court decision, as the platform refused to share user information requested by Ankara, Turkish officials announced on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu highlighted the challenges faced by authorities in monitoring and intervening when illegal or criminal content is shared on Discord. "Security personnel cannot go through the content. We can only intervene when users complain to us about content shared there," he told reporters in parliament. Uraloglu added, "Since Discord refuses to share its own information, including IP addresses and content, with our security units, we were forced to block access."

The block comes in the wake of public outrage in Turkey over the murder of two women by a 19-year-old man in Istanbul earlier this month. Social media content revealed that some Discord users subsequently praised the killings, prompting authorities to take action.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc explained that an Ankara court decided to block access to Discord from Turkey due to "sufficient suspicion that crimes of child sexual abuse and obscenity" had been committed by some users on the platform.

Turkey has banned Discord.

And hey I don't love Discord, but that's because too many people use is as a coordination tool when it was designed for gaming communities.

It absolutely should not be banned by any government.

This is why decentralization actually matters.

— abigail carlson (@abigailcarlson_) October 9, 2024

 This development follows a similar move by Russia's communications regulator, which blocked Discord on Tuesday for violating Russian law. The platform had previously been fined for failing to remove banned content, according to the TASS news agency.

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Despite the defense challenges, Israel's high-tech cyber security sector continues to thrive on the global stage. A delegation of 35 Israeli cyber companies participated in the prestigious RSA Conference earlier this month in San Francisco, the world's leading cyber security event.

Their presence highlighted the cutting-edge innovations Israeli startups are bringing to the rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape. As artificial intelligence is increasingly integrated across industries, malicious actors are exploiting these technologies for large-scale attacks.

"The vast majority of organizations worldwide are adopting AI-based technologies extremely quickly, but security is lagging behind," Elad Shulman, co-founder and CEO of Lasso Security, one of the AI security startups that were part of the conference, told Israel Hayom. "This is one of the hottest areas in software today, and Israeli startups like us are already leading the way."

Shulman said multinational corporations and investors alike are eagerly seeking out the unique expertise of Israeli cyber firms. Some 30% of companies using AI have already suffered breaches related to the emerging threat.

David Carmiel, CEO of Kela cyber threat intelligence platform, offered a proactive defense service to safeguard AI systems. "Through our solution, we can train and test AI capabilities while preventing misuse, allowing clients to get ahead of constantly evolving cyber threats," he explained.

Carmiel emphasized the importance of Israel's presence at RSA, saying, "With many companies avoiding travel to Israel, participation was crucial to strengthen our economy and highlight our cybersecurity prowess."

The delegation's success underscores the growing dominance of Israel's cybersecurity industry. According to the Israel Export Institute, the sector broke records in 2023 with an estimated $25 billion in exports, comprising one-third of Israel's total high-tech exports.

"We are proud to have facilitated over 440 meetings for these companies with potential investors, clients, and trade representatives worldwide in an exposure event in collaboration with NTT, who hosted us at their offices in San Francisco, and Plug and Play, who assisted in marketing the event as part of the RSA conference" Nili Shalev, CEO of the Export Institute, said. "Especially now, we are committed to providing our exporters the support to access global markets."

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Cognni has been named a finalist for the Microsoft Security 20/20 Compliance Trailblazer award, the company announced Tuesday.

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Cognni's artificial intelligence (AI)-based solution enables infosec teams to make sense of shared activities by mapping, detecting and then investigating exposures.

"All of the team at Cognni are so proud to be recognized by Microsoft for the work we do in automating M365 security," said Cognni co-founder and CEO Guy Eisdorfer.

"As information is the lifeblood of every organization, we want to ensure CISOs and InfoSec teams can sleep at night. Because of this we have created an AI platform that thinks like a human and understands when important information is at risk, enriching your Microsoft tools. Cognni puts your InfoSec on Autopilot, taking compliance and security to new frontiers."

At the second annual Microsoft Security 20/20 awards to be held May 12, 2021, we will celebrate finalists in 18 categories spanning security, compliance, and identity. Cognni has been nominated as a finalist for Compliance Trailblazer.

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Five teams representing various branches of the IDF recently completed a first-of-its kind international competitive cyber drill in which they competed against nearly 60 teams from 13 other countries.

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The competition, which was held last Thursday under the auspices of the US Army's Cyber Center of Excellence, pitted the IDF personnel against each other as well as the international teams.

With a focus on security and defense, the competition presented challenges designed to mimic real-time situations and check the teams' ability to work under a time crunch and cooperate.

The IDF noted that this was the first drill in which cyber defense teams from different branches of the military had worked together under the IDF's Cyber Defense Directorate, established last year. The goal of the new directorate is to unite all the IDF's cyber defenses into a single, key defensive element.

According to the IDF, the drill offered a challenging new training opportunity that could help keep the IDF's cyber defenses sharp.

However, the IDF did not win. The cyber laurels went to the team from Taiwan.

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The PTL Group is an Israeli-owned Chinese company that provides support to multiple international companies taking their first steps in the Chinese market. Its chairman, Zvi Shalgo, said in a statement that "the demand for the Chinese market goes on and continues to grow. We haven't seen companies avoid entering the market or change their plans. On the contrary, some are working to set up new operations right now."

Avner Ben-Bassat, CEO of Plataine, an Israeli developer of artificial-intelligence-based solutions for the optimization of manufacturing processes in advanced industries, said he projected that the company's operations will grow significantly with time, "even though we had to update our plans due to the COVID-19 outbreak."

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Plataine's optimization systems have been installed in heavy industrial plants, such as wind-turbine manufacturing, automotive supplies, furniture manufacturers, and civilian-aircraft production sites. "Our core technology is an AI-based software system. It can connect to the production line, to the machines online and their sensors and gather figures on them. It 'understands' what is happening, and makes predictions. If something negative is about to happen, it will generate an alert," explained Ben-Bassat.

The system knows how to alert operators to flawed components, warn about upcoming bottlenecks, and urge production managers to take action. It can even notify production lines of delays up ahead and the need to change a working plan, or to gather materials from other sources. The technology is powered by advanced algorithms, said Ben-Bassat, adding that "the secret to success is making this available – not only to math experts, but to employees on the production line."

The software creates a "smart factory," said Ben-Bassat, making hundreds and even thousands of routine decisions that would normally occupy employees' time.

"We believe in human-machine teams and giving people a better tool to free them up from the simpler decisions and get them on to the bigger challenges. This gives them more time to think ahead, for example, to work on the next proposal to a client," he said.

The company is active in the United States, Europe, China and Israel, and every year, it adds new sectors, such as shipyards.

'The Chinese economy has resumed its functioning'

The Chinese market is an "obvious destination" for Plataine, said Ben-Bassat. After setting up operations, the company "quickly realized we can't do this by remote control and decided to set up a local team of Chinese citizens," he explained, enabling Plataine to engage local clients with local know-how on deal closing and business culture.

Ben-Bassat said that in January, just before the pandemic erupted, Plataine was experiencing "very good momentum" with a rise in sales and future clients in the pipeline. This occurred despite the ongoing trade war that had already been raging between the United States and China, which caused some of Plataine's companies to simply pick up their entire factory and move to Vietnam, where Plataine is also active.

Once the pandemic struck, "we were first worried about the welfare of our employees in China," he said.

Nevertheless, after two months of lockdown, the company saw that activities had picked up just where they left off, he added. "The Chinese economy has resumed its functioning; my team in China flies to visit clients and close deals." In the meantime, he noted, the local team has become more independent since Israeli executives and product managers cannot currently fly into China.

Chinese companies that are directed towards local consumption have weathered the storm better, Ben-Bassat said, while those that are based on exports are facing greater difficulties, due to the recessions in Europe and America.

"In the end, the whole world is a community, connected by the umbilical cord. I live these links," he said. "China will continue to be a central market."

Asked about the recent pressure placed on the Israeli government by the United States to reduce contracts to Chinese companies, Ben-Bassat said that his own company does not deal with security-based or sensitive technology sectors in China and sticks to manufacturing.

"There are some sectors I pass on for a variety of reasons. It's not a difficult dilemma," he said. "We do have security clients in the US and Israel, in line with Israeli regulation. In China, we limit ourselves to the civilian sector. That provides more than enough business."

'Bolster our partnerships with existing customers'

The Trump administration, which has had a strong relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has pushed heavily on its allies to distance from China. In June, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the American Jewish Committee's Virtual Global Forum that China is "a growing challenge to the United States, to Israel, indeed to all free people."

In particular, America has expressed concern over Chinese control over investment in infrastructure and technology, such as 5G networks. Israel has taken heed of these warnings to some extent, recently denying China the opportunity to build Israel's Sorek B desalination plant.

Eran Navon, regional director of Asia-Pacific at GeoEdge – an Israeli company that provides automated Quality Assurance and cyber-security tools for online ads – said "advertising trends in China are currently quite similar to Europe and the USA."

He explained that "we are seeing a slowdown and cutting back on the advertising budgets of the large brands. Contrary to what many might think, this creates a large supply of programmatic advertising space at a relatively low cost. As a result, viewers are exposed to low-quality ads with inappropriate content, often accompanied by security issues, too. These issues drive the need for our services. We are using the current time to bolster our partnerships with existing customers. At the same time, we have had quite a few success stories with newly introduced customers."

Navon said that the coming months represent significant opportunities in China with the economy reopening and companies returning to spend. "China is going through a process of reorganization. New opportunities are waiting for every entrepreneur."

Navon has lived in Beijing for six years now and speaks Chinese. He has been promoting Israeli-Chinese technological cooperation for nearly a decade, mainly with small and medium-sized companies, ranging from startups to media companies.

GeoEdge, which specializes in cyber scanning of digital advertising in real-time, ensures that ads have no malicious malware and don't redirect users to unwanted content without their consent. The company is active around the world; in China, it works with app developers and advertising platforms.

"We also block inappropriate content thereby ensuring a high level of content and user experience," he told JNS. "The advertising world lacks regulation and is exposed to malicious actors. We are an indication of quality and regulation," he added.

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When the coronavirus pandemic erupted, the company's entire environment was naturally affected. "The uncertainty and financial instability meant that large advertising budgets were frozen," said Navon. Lower-quality ads filled the vacuum as a result.

With people at home during lockdowns, a growing number of online users visited Chinese websites and applications. At the same time, malicious advertisers were taking advantage of the situation due to their ability to purchase greater online space.

This helped contribute to a rise in defective advertising, designed to pull users to questionable landing pages, explained Navon. "We are there to help our clients maximize their profit potential, but to also safeguard their users' experience," he stated. "Our clients' ad revenue decreased, but their need for our services increased, creating a special phase in the relationships," he acknowledged. "We were very much strengthening our ties with our clients during this time."

Navon is the company's sole representative in China, where he works with tens of clients. Even when he couldn't fly to visit clients, his fluency in Chinese and the fact that he was in the same time zone meant that he could continue to work with them on a daily basis.

"I haven't left Beijing in six months because of the restrictions," he noted. "But it now is becoming possible to travel. The objective is to visit clients, to strengthen ties."

Navon said he has not felt the consequences of growing US-China tensions, adding that many of his competitors are American companies operating in China.

"The Chinese private sector is very oriented towards finding the best quality partners and suppliers. If companies here see an opportunity to work with American technology that meets their needs, they will do so. There is no declared boycott here."

Israelis, he said, have a positive reputation for innovation in China—a factor that provides a certain advantage at the start of interactions.

"As an Israeli and even a Jew living in China, I can say that we have a favorable reputation among Chinese people, especially in Shanghai, which had a Jewish community made up of [World War II] refugees. This community is very fondly remembered," he noted.

"There is an aspect to Chinese society that very much welcomes foreigners," he elaborated. "The cultural differences are very significant. No matter how well I speak Chinese, it will be there, but the overall sense – even during the coronavirus period and accusations between China and the US – is of mutual respect with foreigners."

 Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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