A group of former Israeli cyber-warriors have announced the launch of a foundry to incubate the next generation of Internet security startups.
The incubator, called Team8 Ventures, has roots with Israel's equivalent to the US National Security Agency: Unit 8200. Retired general Nadav Zafrir, who previously commanded Unit 8200 within the Israeli Defense Forces, cofounded the effort.
US investors, including Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco’s VC arm, Bessemer Venture Partners and Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors are backing Team8. Together they have seeded the company with $18 million in A-round investment.
“Global cybersecurity threats are only becoming more targeted, frequent, and destructive in nature, so we¹re fortunate to be partnering with Team8, who is at the forefront of new cutting-edge cybersecurity innovation,” said Schmidt, founding partner of Innovation Endeavors and executive chairman of Google, in a statement. “Team8 is a great example of how Israel has some of the best talent in the world to confront these challenges through its ability to develop advanced and creative solutions for this rapidly evolving landscape."
Team8 plans to act as a platform for building and launching cybersecurity companies from scratch. It will leverage a core technology research group that acts as an operational think-tank, carrying out extensive, practical research that incorporates offensive and defensive expertise.
"With the escalation of cyber-conflicts, the world needs inter-disciplinary teams of the very best talent to formulate new approaches to security," said Zafrir. "Over the past year, Team8 has developed a unique model to tackle the toughest problems, inventing disruptive technologies that are commercialized through the creation of new startup companies."
Also, Team8 will collaborate with backers and infrastructure giants Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent on strategic research and engineering. This will include close collaboration between Team8 and ALU’s Bell Labs researchers, working at a cloud and security facility near Tel Aviv.
Marcus Weldon, president of Bell Labs and CTO at Alcatel-Lucent added, “As we enter the era where our lives are digitized and everything is connected via IP networks, it is critical that we increase the security of these networks and systems. We need to know that sensitive and private data is protected and any breach discovered and remediated before any damage is done. The Bell Labs team in Israel will be collaborating closely with Team8 to both detect and then remediate even the most sophisticated attacks, leveraging the unique expertise of Team8 and Bell Labs.”