Israel is providing both offensive and defensive cyber aid to India from the past 30 years
India and Israel have marked 30 years of delicate relationship this year. The diplomatic relationship between both the countries have established in 1992, and since then the bilateral ties in the middle of both nations have blossomed at the level of Military, agriculture, Economic, Technology, Cyber, and Political.
The 30th anniversary of India and Israel has come at a time when the growing cyber relation is in the spotlight over Pegasus software (The surveillance software made by the notorious NSO group of Israel) for operating offensive cyber moves. The firm sells the license for use only to governments, and only after approval from the Israel government’s defense export control agency.
In 2021, India used Pegasus spyware of Israel for spying on the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Pakistan accused the Indian government of spying on Imran Khan (Prime minister of Pakistan). Also, the Pakistani nation called on the UN agency for investigating into the matter of spying. According to the reports by the Global Consortium of Media outlets, a leaked database of 50,000 phone numbers was selected for surveillance by clients of the NSO group.
As the ties between India and Israel are escalating, Israel also wants to contribute to the technology sector. “We are all interested in Make in India, and we see an immense potential for cooperation with India” statement by Naor Gilon (Israel’s Ambassador to India) explained the desire of the Israeli Nation “to share” technology and know, how to generate the success for Make in India (New Delhi’s Flagship program), at the same time he expressed some concerns related to the violation of IP Norms in India.
Besides this, recently in March 2022, an Israel-based Caralogix Technology firm established a cyber security venture with the name of ‘Snowbit’ (CEO-Navdeep Manaktala and Zack Barak) in India that will operate across Tel Aviv and New Delhi / Gurugram. The firm focuses on securing cloud–native companies against growing cyber offensive threats in a quick, efficient, and cost–effective manner.
The Snowbit firm is an expert in supporting multi-cloud infrastructure and Software-as-a-service (SaaS) environments. Also, it allows Indian clients to be able to process and retain data within the country at all times thereby remaining compliant with applicable data localization norms.
There is a lot of commonality between India and Israel in the terms of technology. It was clearly seen when in past, the space technology program of both Nations was converging together because of holding a common interest.
Israel also helped India after the attack of 26/11 (terrorist attack on the Taj Hotel of Mumbai, India) by fulfilling India’s requirement of monitoring coastal Borders by providing Synthetic aperture radar Technology.
In the end, we can say that the completion of 30 years of diplomatic relationship between India and Israel is proof that Israel supports India from several years in the domain of technology and cyber (both offensive and defensive). The friendship between both the nations is not so fresh but it is getting deepened with the time that till now the Israeli nation is thinking to advance India’s ‘Make in India’ flagship program by expressing the desire ‘to share’ technology.
