1 Identify at least one important hub and one important broker in the Unit 8200 network. Israel, a nation of just 8 million people, exports more than

$6bn worth of cybersecurity products a year, accounting for about 10 per cent of the global cybersecurity market.

At the heart of this success is Unit 8200, the largest unit of the Israeli Defence Forces and the equivalent of America’s National Security Agency.

Unit 8200’s alumni have produced more hi-tech startups per capita than the University of Stanford. Some of the successful companies originating with Unit 8200 include Check Point, with 2,900 employees and a pioneer in Virtual Private Networks; NICE Systems, with 2,700 employees and a pioneer in telephone recording technology; and Palo Alto Networks, with 3,000 employees and a pioneer in computer firewall technology. Unit 8200 recruits are drawn from young Israelis doing their national military service. Recruitment into Unit 8200 is highly selective (in the Israeli Defence Force, only pilot training is harder to enter) and favours skilled computer science students and linguists. Recruits come disproportionately from the richer and more highly educated Tel Aviv area of Israel, and from elite schools such as Leyada, the semi-private Hebrew University High School in Jerusalem (where the founder of Check Point was a student).

Alumni of Unit 8200 go not only into hi-tech business;

many pursue successful careers in politics, the judiciary, the media and academia. For example, the former CEO of NICE Systems became director general of the Israeli Ministry of Finance.

Unit 8200’s young recruits are intensively trained and work long hours in small groups applying the latest technology to security matters that might involve life and death. To maximise security, Unit 8200’s technology systems

– from analytics to data mining, intercept and intelligence management – are designed and built in-house. This experience prepares Unit 8200 alumni well for futures in hi-tech business. Avi Hasson, Chief Scientist at the Israeli Economy Ministry and himself an alumnus of Unit 8200, describes the working environment: ‘When it comes to managing a startup, Unit 8200 is a fantastic school. . . .

The unit encourages independent thought. It’s something that was adopted later by many companies, a little like the culture in Google, in which good ideas can come from anywhere.’