For Israel and Japan, closer cooperation in cybersecurity is both an economic opportunity and a strategic necessity.
Technological innovation and international trade are central to the prosperity of both Israel and Japan.
We have a direct interest in protecting each other’s security and success.
The theme of this summit, “Securing the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” gives that cooperation a particular urgency.
An AI assistant with access to a company’s files can help employees work more effectively. If an attacker manipulates it into releasing confidential information, that same access becomes a vulnerability.
As businesses authorise AI systems to carry out tasks on their behalf, controlling what those systems can do becomes essential.
At the same time, AI can help defenders analyse suspicious activity and investigate attacks more quickly. It can also help attackers create convincing fake messages and modify malicious software.
Our task is to make these technologies dependable enough to use in the systems on which our economies rely.
Israel has substantial expertise to contribute.
For more than three decades, Israeli engineers and entrepreneurs have helped shape the cybersecurity industry.
Check Point helped pioneer modern firewall technology, protecting computer networks against unauthorised access. Today, Israeli companies are helping address the security challenges of cloud computing and AI.
Wiz is a prominent example.
Founded by Israeli entrepreneurs, it developed technology that helps organisations identify risks across complex cloud environments. Its tools also help security teams understand where AI agents operate, which data they can reach and how their access might expose the organisation to attack.
Google’s acquisition of Wiz, announced last year at 32 billion dollars, was completed this March. It is a striking demonstration of the commercial value that global industry places on expertise developed in Israel.
CyberArk addresses another essential problem: controlling access to sensitive systems.
Its technology applies to people, software and increasingly AI agents. The underlying principle is straightforward: software acting on a company’s behalf should receive only the access required for its task.
As companies entrust more work to AI agents, the ability to enforce those limits becomes increasingly important.
The value of Israeli expertise in this field is reflected in Palo Alto Networks’ acquisition of CyberArk, completed earlier this year. CyberArk’s technology now forms a central part of its approach to protecting access to sensitive systems.
These companies illustrate Israel’s ability to develop technologies that become important to the operations of major businesses worldwide. Their expertise is directly relevant to the next stage of AI adoption.
That capability has been built over many years.
Israel’s military technology units give young people substantial responsibility for difficult problems. They learn to work under pressure and to examine how a system might fail. Many later carry that experience into companies and universities.
Research provides the deeper foundations. In the city of Be’er Sheva, Ben-Gurion University works alongside businesses and national cyber institutions, connecting scientific expertise with operational problems.
The movement of people and knowledge between these institutions helps turn research into usable technology. Our small domestic market also requires companies to understand international customers from an early stage.
Israel has developed this expertise while facing persistent threats to its own security. We know how much depends on keeping civilian services functioning under pressure.
For Japan, these capabilities have particular relevance.
Japan’s advances in robotics, industrial automation and connected mobility create opportunities for cybersecurity to become part of a product from its design.
Its manufacturers also operate extensive networks of factories and suppliers, with equipment that may remain in service for decades.
Protecting those operations requires knowledge of the machinery, production processes and safety requirements, as well as the potential cyber threats.
There is already a useful example of how our strengths can combine. In 2021, Claroty, an Israeli-founded industrial cybersecurity company, and Yokogawa Engineering Asia announced a partnership serving customers in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
It brought together Claroty’s security technology and Yokogawa’s knowledge of industrial operations.
It also demonstrated how Japanese and Israeli companies can jointly serve customers beyond our two countries.
AI creates further opportunities for this kind of work.
Consider a security system that detects suspicious activity in a factory and recommends isolating part of the network.
That action might contain an attack. It might also interrupt production or affect equipment whose safe operation depends on continuous communication.
The decision requires an understanding of both the intrusion and the factory.
Israeli security specialists and Japanese industrial engineers could work together to establish which responses can be automated and which require human approval. They could test those responses under realistic conditions before they are used in production.
This would give practical meaning to the discussion of human oversight on today’s programme. The objective is a system that can act quickly within limits its operators understand and have tested.
There is a substantial commercial opportunity here. Security developed jointly with manufacturers can be built into the equipment and services they supply worldwide.
For customers, it can make adopting AI a more dependable investment.
Governments can help by supporting joint research and trials, and by connecting the relevant public institutions with the companies doing this work.
This is also a matter of economic security.
Cyber espionage can put years of a company’s research into a competitor’s hands. An attack on a critical supplier can interrupt production across several countries. For economies such as ours, protecting industrial knowledge and keeping production running are matters of national security.
Israel and Japan should make these risks a focus of joint research and development.
Israeli expertise in identifying vulnerabilities and detecting intrusions can help protect the technologies that Japanese companies are bringing into factories, vehicles and infrastructure.
Japanese engineering expertise can help ensure that those protections work reliably under demanding operating conditions.
Developing them together would allow our companies to offer customers around the world technologies whose security has been tested alongside their performance.
Our partnership should also strengthen solidarity among countries prepared to stand together against common threats.
Two days ago, the Omani co-pilot of a flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv stabbed the Indian captain, Smit Machchhar, in an attempt to bring down the aircraft.
Despite his wounds, Captain Machchhar opened the cockpit door, allowing Israeli passengers and crew members to overpower the attacker. A backup crew landed the aircraft safely in Saudi Arabia.
As Israel’s ambassador, I am proud of our citizens’ courage and deeply grateful to the Indian captain and the crew of this Emirati airline.
In cybersecurity, too, an effective response can depend on people in several countries. A Japanese business may use Israeli security software and store its data with a provider in another country.
During an attack, these companies need to investigate together and coordinate their response. We should establish and test those working relationships before a crisis.
Within this wider effort, cooperation among democracies has particular importance.
Israel and Japan should deepen their cooperation with India, the United States, and other democracies that are still committed to our common freedom and that have retained their moral clarity.
We share an interest in protecting societies in which people can speak freely, businesses can innovate, and governments can make their own decisions without threats or intimidation from foreign powers.
Both Israel and Japan face threats from authoritarian regimes and the cyber groups they support. Their operations reach across regions, targeting the knowledge, infrastructure and institutions on which our societies depend.
Our response must reach across regions as well.
AI adds to this challenge.
AI can create a fake recording of a business leader’s voice, telling employees to transfer money or share passwords. It can also produce a video that appears to show a public official saying something they never said.
Protecting confidence in legitimate communication becomes part of protecting our institutions.
An attack on one democracy should leave the others better prepared. A method identified by one country’s specialists should help others recognise and counter it. Those who seek to exploit our vulnerabilities should encounter countries willing and able to support one another.
We should now set our ambitions higher: develop technologies together, strengthen cooperation between our institutions, and help protect the international networks on which our prosperity depends.
This is work in which government, industry and research each have an essential role.
Israel is ready to deepen that cooperation. I look forward to discussing with you, here in Tokyo, where our countries can make the greatest contribution together.
For free nations, the ability to innovate, to trade and to make our own choices depends increasingly on the security of the systems that connect us.
Israel and Japan have the expertise to help secure that freedom. We should make this a defining ambition of our partnership.
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