Israeli cyber sector navigates wartime conditions

• Companies don't foresee the ongoing conflict hurting their sales and revenue numbers.

Yes, but: As many of these employees and executives described unaffected business operations, their surroundings showed the anxiety and challenges that war brings.

• As he was talking with Axios, one person's phone flooded with alerts that missiles were targeting a region his family lived in.
• Executives were interrupted by their children — whose schools are currently closed — running in to ask questions.
• And another source started a call by warning of the chance he'd have to leave if a siren started wailing.

What they're saying: "It's part of life for an Israeli company," Sharon Eilon, chief customer officer at Aqua Security, told Axios.

• "It's not foreign to us; it's all geared around when these things, like now, are happening," he added. "We're in it, and we know how to deal with it."

Zoom out: Israel's cybersecurity sector was already having a difficult year.

• Macroeconomic conditions and political strife had prompted drop-offs in venture capital funding to Israeli companies and led roughly 70% of Israeli startups to relocate parts of their businesses.

Between the lines: The engineering and research teams of many Israeli cybersecurity companies are headquartered in Israel, while their marketing and sales teams are based elsewhere around the world, executives told Axios.

• At startup Cybersixgill, that means most customers aren't seeing disruptions because they typically interact with the overseas sales and marketing teams, CEO Sharon Wagner said.

Zoom in: Those employees in Israel have a growing list of challenges that their employers are hoping to assist with.

• Check Point Software Technologies, a global cybersecurity company with a significant presence in Israel, has started a fund to help employees relocate to safer places or meet other needs, Gil Messing, the company's chief of staff, told Axios.
• Wagner said his company is planning to have a day where employees can bring their kids to work once the company returns to the office to help alleviate any lingering child care stress.

• Check Point has also contracted out a mental health crisis line for employees to call, Messing added.

Meanwhile, employees are being drafted into the Israeli military's reserve service.

• About 15 of Cybersixgill's 100 employees have either been brought into the reserves or have significant others who were drafted, Wagner said.
• Roughly 20 of Aqua Security's 200 employees in Israel have been drafted, Eilon said.

The intrigue: Companies that were already operating remotely or in a hybrid model are having an easier time transitioning to workers' current needs, Messing said.

The bottom line: Much like other industries in the region, Israeli cyber companies are navigating a dual reality: maintaining a sense of business as usual while confronting the trauma of working in war.

• "We strongly believe that a strong nation is not only a strong army, but it's a strong economy," Wagner said.

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