Ohad Zaidenberg is probably a well-known young man… in Iran. A few years ago, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps website published an extensive article about him, defining him as a “senior Zionist officer in Israeli intelligence”, responsible for cyber attacks in Iran. The article exposed personal details of Zaidenberg, like his home address, phone number, and personal photos.
The Iranians, as it turns out, didn’t just pick on him for no reason. At that time, Zaidenberg was a chief researcher at Clear Sky cyber company, where he focused on researching enemy entities like Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. “Thousands of Iranians sent me threatening messages”, he recalls. “Despite the great difficulty and fear of compromised personal security, I didn’t stop my activities”.
Since the events of October 7, Ohad has been operating on two fronts – military and civilian. On the military front, he is a reserve leader of an intelligence center in the IDF. In his civilian life, he manages the Israeli Center for Cyber Activities Coordination (ILC4), a voluntary defensive cyber organization he established immediately after the outbreak of the war. The organization helped evacuees protect themselves against cyber attacks and recover their information, mainly from computers and phones looted by the terrorists. At its peak, the organization included about 2,000 volunteer cyber experts.
“Despite the difficulty of stopping my career path and daily routine, despite being exposed to horror content as part of my work, and despite the pressure and sense of responsibility, I find comfort in my ability to contribute to the war effort and use my skills to shape the future of the country”, says Zaidenberg.
Though he has yet to reach the age of 30, he has more than a decade of experience in intelligence fields. He served in Unit 8200, learned the Persian language fluently, and won the Intelligence Head’s Award for Creative Thinking and another award for developing advanced learning technologies in the field of intelligence. Later, he completed management and political science studies at the university.
“At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I established and managed a volunteer organization called CTI League, aiming to create a safer cyber space for medical institutions and life-saving organizations worldwide”, he recounts. “We dealt with hundreds of cyber attacks and helped hospitals protect themselves against them”.
For this role, Ohad won the “Making Things Different” award from SANS, and appeared on the Wired25 list, along with the CEOs of Google and Apple.
Zaidenberg serves as Head of Intelligence at the beverage giant AB Inbev, which controls a third of the global beer market, where he established and manages the cyber intelligence field and intelligence teams.
