Japan sees 12.8 billion cyber attacks a year. This Israeli company wants to help

From today, Votiro, an Israeli cyber-security startup launches in Japan. The island nation’s pacifism has kept it out of war zones for nearly seventy years, but the online world presents a different battlefield.

Japan experienced 12.8 billion cyberattacks last year, according to a recent report. Votiro co-founder Itay Glick tells Tech in Asia that the firm will be focusing on protecting companies in the fields of healthcare, financial, and critical infrastructure.

Founded by Glick and Aviv Grafi four years ago, Votiro claims to be bootstrapped and profitable. It is coming off a win at the Global Excellence Awards – a well-known event in the security industry – where it took home the prize for innovations in next generation security. Votiro tries to separate itself from the competition by providing solutions for unpredictable malware.

“Our focus is not on trying to detect the malware, but rather on trying to prevent the exploit (either unknown, known, or zero-day exploits) from operating on the computer using a signature-less technique, which cleanses the file before it reaches the end-user in the gateway with near real-time latency,” Glick says.

Votiro puts special emphasis on email. Email is gateway that is heavily attacked by malicious hackers, so Votiro’s technology takes all incoming email and scans, analyzes, and rebuilds all data files. Glaser says that the process takes only seconds and ensures that all threats are eliminated before arriving in the user’s inbox.

It’s a solution that could be well-received in Japan. According to Reuters, Japanese companies are surprisingly susceptible to cyberattacks. In a study by cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, the average rating was 58.5, well below the passing score of 72.

Votiro comes to Japan with a strong pedigree. Both Glick and Grafi were in “an elite intelligence unit” of the Israeli Defense Forces and have more than 10 years experience in private security. That said, they are not the only solution provider available to Japanese firms. Respected companies like NEC and LAC are already stocked with clients. Startups are also in the space. CS Cloud, which has secured backing from IT giant GMO, is another four-year old startup that Votiro will have to contend with.

See: Flip a coin: half of China’s government websites have security flaws