By Sara Miller, NoCamels -
Two Israeli technology veterans have drawn on their decades of professional experience to create a new startup that combats cyberattacks on some of the country’s key institutions, including national water company Mekorot.
To achieve the desired level of protection from such attacks for their clients, IXDen’s founders and co-CEOs Zion Harel and Dr. Leonid Cooperman devised entirely new software from scratch with a focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning.
“It’s absolutely new,” says Cooperman of the technology. “We have three US patents on this, and the majority of those patents are related to AI and machine learning. The algorithmic mathematical area is AI machine learning and the algorithms themselves are absolutely new.”
Collecting information from sensors placed around the company’s infrastructure, IXDen uses those algorithms to analyze millions of pieces of data every day in order to spot any anomalies that point to suspicious activity or even to just identify a fault in the system.
“We detect a wide range of different problems, starting from an attempt at hacking, at touching something in the hardware and software of the system, going all the way to behavioral changes in their equipment,” Cooperman tells NoCamels.
“It could even be a water pump or water tank,” he says in the case of Mekorot.
The water company has around 3,000 sites in 10 regions across Israel, including 700 water pumping stations and 20 desalination sites. The IXDen platform is active at each location, analyzing 300 million pieces of data on a daily basis and feeding it all into one centralized system.
“Think about 300 million data [points] going to our AI in real time, showing on the screen the current health situation of each one of the devices – all of the country on one screen,” Harel explains.
“If there is a problem, they can drill down and we can show them that the sensor in one of the stations in south Be’er Sheva is going to be [compromised] in about a week,” he says. “We are a cross-country monitoring system.”
The day-to-day AI system is fully automated, Cooperman says, with no human involvement at all. Detecting a potential problem in the system, be it a leaky pipe or an attempted infiltration from hostile actors, is all carried out by the software and hardware working together.
The technology works as an internal network, based on a series of specially designed computers called industrial controllers. Each controller is linked to multiple sensors, which it monitors for information and takes action according to the data it receives.
Major decisions, however, such as shutting down a section of the platform do need a person to carry them out, Cooperman explains. This is because a shutdown of any part of the platform can have implications for the entire network.
Cooperman and Harel founded the company in 2019, after both had enjoyed successful exits with previous companies. Looking for a new challenge, they decided to set up IXDen, using the knowhow they had accumulated with their backgrounds in computer science and engineering and through years working in cybersecurity and fintech. The platform went live two years later.
“We started here from security in the banking industry and the telecom industry,” says Cooperman, explaining that many of the principles of protection involved are the same.
“It sounds far, but it’s not that far,” he says.
“I think it’s an adventure; it’s exciting,” adds Harel. “We are doing things that are new. It’s our own company that we developed from zero.”
With critical utilities and infrastructure worldwide becoming an increasing target of cyberattacks, countries are placing more emphasis on securing critical infrastructure.
Israel is the frequent target of cyber attackers, suffering repeated attempts to bring down its major infrastructure, but the level of aggression massively grew in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,200 people.
The head of cyber intelligence at Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity company Radware, Ron Meyran, told NoCamels last month that Israel’s subsequent declaration of war on Hamas immediately saw a huge wave of foreign cyber strikes that targeted the digital assets of Israeli government branches, businesses and institutions.
Aside from Mekorot, IXDen’s technology is also used by Israeli wastewater companies, municipalities and even a cybersecurity defense organization, Harel tells NoCamels. In the case of the latter, he declines to elaborate, saying only that the project is “confidential.”
The company also works with several water and energy organizations in Europe, but its emphasis is on fending off cyberattacks in Israel during wartime, especially on such a vital resource as water.
“We are proud and we like it,” says Harel. “It’s not all about money.”
