AGT International subcontracted the project to the Israel-based company Logic Industries, which provided the actual cyber expertise for its development. In 2008, the UAE signed a deal with AGT International, a Swiss-based Internet of Things (IoT) company, for a massive security and surveillance systems of its national borders, the Abu Dhabi area and the country’s oil facilities. In the UAE, Israeli cyber firms have provided services in the security sector for years. The Saudi Arabia-Israel cybersecurity relationship also commenced in the counter-terrorism sector as Riyadh engages with the Israeli company IntuView, which uses artificial intelligence for mining intelligence from online texts, in order to monitor terrorist threats on social media channels. As reported by high-tech entrepreneur and former Israeli parliamentarian, Erel Margalit, at that time, Israel’s cybersecurity firms assisted Saudi Arabia in dealing with the attack. A landmarking cyberattack that destroyed data from 30,000 devices connected to Aramco’s network, causing serious economic and brand damage to the company. Although the Accords have facilitated relations in the different fields, cyber partnerships between Israel and the GCC countries preceded the agreements and extended to countries out of the deal including, Saudi Arabia.Ī notable, early, case of cybersecurity cooperation occurred in 2012, when the Iranian-developed Shamoon virus hit Saudi Arabia’s oil giant Saudi Aramco and Qatar’s RasGas. This collaboration was seen as a reflection of a maturing relationship forged on the basis of the 2020 Abraham Accords, which formalised diplomatic relations between the UAE, Bahrain and Israel. The campaign had been reportedly led by a cybercrime group called ‘Lebanese Cedar,’ allegedly tied to Hezbollah’s cyber unit, and had affected 250 companies worldwide, including in the United States, United Kingdom, Israel, UAE, Egypt and Jordan. The most recent example of such collaboration came in April 2021, when the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Signal Intelligence Agency (SIA) reported that it had shared intelligence with Israel over a cyberespionage campaign discovered in January 2021. Given the intersection of Israel’s and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries’ security interests in tackling Iran’s activities, cooperation in cybersecurity is rapidly emerging as a key element in Israel-Gulf security dynamics. These are very attractive for the actors involved in the low-intensity, war of attrition being waged between Iran and its asymmetric allies (on one hand) and Israel and the Gulf monarchies and their allies (on the other). Cyberspace offers a particular operational theatre defined, in part, by: plausible deniability, difficulty in retaliation and the high cost-effectiveness ratio. In the Middle East, with tensions rising, there is a clear push to develop non-traditional means for dealing with non-traditional challenges. International security is an ever-evolving field.
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