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PayPal Joins Beer-Sheva’s Advanced Technologies Park

PayPal Joins Beer-Sheva’s Advanced Technologies Park

March 18, 2015

Business & Management, Homeland & Cyber Security

Globes — Beer-Sheva has become one of Israel’s leading cyber centers, as part of the national CyberSpark project, with a frenzy of building in the city’s Advanced Technologies Park, adjacent to BGU’s Marcus Family Campus.

The acquisition of the young Israeli startup CyActive for $60 million by online payment giant PayPal further secures Beer-Sheva’s place on the high-tech map.

CyActive's founders chose to locate their startup in Beer-Sheva, calling the city "the ideal ecosystem in the world for a cyber company."

CyActive’s founders chose to locate their startup in Beer-Sheva, calling the city “the ideal ecosystem in the world for a cyber company.”

CyActive cofounders CEO Liran Tancman and CTO Shlomi Boutnaru, who met during their army service, both come from a defense-intelligence background. In a year or less, their company grew from its two founders to 10 employees, mostly residents of Beer-Sheva and the surrounding area.

The decision to locate the company in the ATP’s CyberLabs cyber security incubator, in which it was the first company, long preceded the founding of the company itself.

“I took part in the Magshimim (Achievers) Program, in which high school students are taught about cyber space and information security, to train them for work in the field in the army and in private life later on,” says Boutnaru.

“For 18 months, I traveled to Beer-Sheva to study there, and I fell in love with the city. There’s a kind of magic in the air that attracts you to Beer-Sheva, and makes you want to stay there,”

“I don’t know a better ecosystem in the world for a cyber company than Beer-Sheva,” Tancman declares. “It has global corporations, a solicitous government, the army nearby, and the University [BGU], where many of our employees were trained.”

“All of these things within one square kilometer are making a critical contribution to the success of companies in the sector. It’s no coincidence that PayPal’s global information security center is being set up here.”

Read more on the Globes website >>