Operational and intelligence failures plus massive cybersecurity failures across the board. All this and much, much more.
16 October 2023 — As I have noted in a series of blog posts over the past week, there has been a flood of information flowing from main stream media and open source intelligence trying to understand and explain how Israel failed to foresee and confront the Hamas attack last weekend.
Shortly before attackers from Gaza poured into Israel at dawn on Saturday, Israeli intelligence detected a surge in activity on some of the Gazan militant networks it monitors. Realizing something unusual was happening, they sent an alert to the Israeli soldiers guarding the Gazan border, according to two senior Israeli security officials.
But the warning wasn’t acted upon, either because the soldiers didn’t get it or the soldiers didn’t read it. Plus, significant numbers of Israeli defense forces were moved from their positions around and along the Gaza strip to positions on the West bank. Here is a map to give you an idea of the geographic space we are talking about.
Shortly afterward, Hamas, the group that controls Gaza, sent drones to disable some of the Israeli military’s cellular communications stations and surveillance towers along the border, preventing the duty officers from monitoring the area remotely with video cameras. The drones also destroyed remote-controlled machine guns that Israel had installed on its border fortifications, removing a key means of combating a ground attack.
That made it easier for Hamas assailants to approach and blow up parts of the border fence and bulldoze it in several places with surprising ease, allowing thousands of Palestinians to walk through the gaps.
These operational failures and weaknesses were among a wide array of logistical and intelligence lapses by the Israeli security services that paved the way for the Gazan incursion into southern Israel.
Except that these operational and intelligence failures are just parts of a massive security, and cybersecurity, failure across the board.
To discuss all of these failures … and much, much, much more … I spoke with Andy Jenkinson.
As my regular watchers and blog readers know, Andy is a well-known and oft cited expert in cybersecurity and the complexity of our cyber infrastructures, and the mind-boggling demands of internet security. This interview will be a revelation to many.
After the interview there is a Postscript with information on how to reach Andy, plus a few links to his recent writings and books.
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POSTSCRIPT
You can reach Andy at:
Cybersec Innovation Partners Ltd,
24/25 The Shard,
32 London Bridge Street,
London, SE1 9SG,
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7293 7001
For Andy’s more detailed thoughts on hybrid war, please read his paper and analysis on his Linkedin site by clicking here.
For his books, please click here.