"Modern wars in general are reflected in cyberspace", Maya Horowitz, VP of Research at Check Point stated, speaking to Hilla Bakshi, Founder of HaMeetupistiot at The Jerusalem Post Women Leaders Summit yesterday.
More concerning than nations attacking other nations in cyberspace, is the trend of hacktivism, which have been seeing more and more of in the last few years. This is where nation states recruit hacktivists to support their political agendas.
With upwards of 40,000 attacks a day, businesses need to know how to protect themselves. What makes these attacks particularly concerning is their agenda of chaos – while cyber criminals are concerned with intelligence or money, hacktivism is a different creature entirely. Quite simply, the goal is to cause damage. Using what we call wipers, they wipe out entire systems and databases, leaving them useless.
The discussion then turned to women in cyberspace where currently women make up only 20%. Maya explained that one of the issues is that when women are offered an opportunity, they are likely not to take it, as they don't meet all the needs of the role. " We know that we have higher expectations of ourselves than men do," Maya stated, making it important to actually talk to these women and find out why they are turning down the opportunity.
Maya also pointed out that women tend to shy away from the spotlight, they don't want to be up front and this is something we need to encourage. "It's very important that we have events like this. It's important that Jerusalem Post takes the time and the effort to highlight women in technology and in other fields, to show that there are strong women leading also in these in these fields."
This article was written in cooperation with Maya Horowitz