Jerusalem, 23 August, 2022 (TPS) — On Tuesday a memorandum of understanding (MOU) agreeing to greater cooperation in the cyber-financial field was signed by the Israel Ministry of Finance and the US Treasury Department. The Cyber, Emergency and Security Unit and the Chief Economist Division at Israel’s Ministry of Finance were behind the new agreement which they said strengthens the “long-standing relationship and cooperation with the US.”
The signing came in furtherance of a meeting that was held by Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman and the US Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo in November 2021, in which the need to strengthen the resilience of financial systems and organizations and to deepen cooperation on the issue was discussed.
On the Israeli side, the agreement was signed by Yoni Mor, head of the Cyber, Emergency and Security Unit at the Ministry of Finance. On the American side, Todd Conklin, Deputy Assistant Secretary, signed the agreement.
The agreement is said to be the first of its kind signed by the Ministry of Finance in this new field – one that combines cyber and finance as areas of national security in need of protection.
Deputy Secretary Adeyemo said, “We are pleased to have the Government of Israel as a partner in our global effort to stop ransomware.”
And he added that America’s partnership with Israel on cyber defense had already resulted in “real-time cyber threat data sharing to prevent ransomware distribution and other cyber-attacks from affecting the US economic sector.” However, Adeyemo did not reveal any details of such successes.
Hackers are everywhere these days. Some are just malicious. Some want money and engage in ransom attacks – hacks that take control of a system or database and hold it hostage for a ransom. And then there are the terrorist cyber-attacks that have been committed in recent years.
Some of these were been proven by Israeli experts at Check Point Software Technologies to have been created and/or backed by agents of the Iranian government. One of those attacks even succeeded in stealing private information belonging to customers of Israel’s Shirbit insurance company a few years ago.
Today, the greatest fear of governments is that such hackers could possibly break into the control systems of national power systems, transportation systems, air traffic control and other areas where countless people could be harmed by terrorists should they gain control.
And cyber terrorists could also break into banks and national financial institutions’ databases and due massive harm to a country’s, or the world’s, economy.
In that light and in accordance with the MoU, toward the end of 2022, the two nations’ respective finance ministries will lead the first bilateral cyber-financial exercise. The exercise will check the resilience of the financial system in the face of a cyber-attack from entities that threaten to damage it, such as cyber terrorists.
The Israeli government stated that this agreement “deepens and tightens” cooperation with the US in the protection of financial infrastructures and the furthering of stability in the financial sector with the goal of strengthening the resilience of both national and international financial systems.
It deals with the fields of financial cyber information sharing including cyber security information, events and threats; work methodologies to strengthen the resilience of the financial system; conducting joint and cross-border cyber-financial exercises.
Israel’s Minister of Finance Avigdor Lieberman commented, “Today we are deepening the long-standing partnership between Israel and the US and deploying an iron dome to the financial system to protect against cyber threats.”
“Together, we are prepared to maintain the continuity of the supply of essential financial services for the citizens of Israel and to maintain the normal operation of the entire financial system,” he added.