A group of Israel Defense Force cyber cadets during a training exercise in March. Photo: IDF.

CTech – A cyber attacker only needs to be smart once, but to defend against attacks you have to be smart all the time, said Nadav Zafrir, co-founder and CEO of Israeli cyber-security startup foundry Team8 and former commander of unit 8200, the Israeli army’s signal intelligence unit.

Zafrir spoke Thursday at Calcalist’s third annual Mind the Tech conference in New York. The three-day event brings together entrepreneurs, investors, and business partners from the US and Israel for networking and business development. The event was held in collaboration with the city of Jerusalem, Israel’s Bank Leumi, and its digital banking subsidiary Leumitech.

Cross-connectivity gives attackers so many opportunities and while defenses have improved they are still lagging behind, Zafrir said.