June 21, 2018 | Intel, the American multinational corporation and tech giant, perhaps best known in Israel for acquiring vision-based driver-assistance system provider Mobileye for $15.3 billion in Israel’s biggest startup exit to date, announced Wednesday it will partner with two Israeli startups in the cybersecurity field. The company’s Vice President, Software and Services Group and General Manager of Intel’s Global Platform Security Division Rick Echeverria made the announcement that Intel will partner with Israeli startups Duality and Enigma at the 8th annual Cyber Week conference, Israel’s international cybersecurity confab taking place this week at Tel Aviv University.

Founded in 2014 and managed by the former commander of Israel’s military intelligence corps group, Unit 8200, Duality is a member of Team8, the Israeli think-tank and venture capital firm. Duality empowers secure digital collaboration by “applying advanced analytics and AI to data while it is encrypted, generating insights without ever exposing unprotected data,” the company’s website said.

“Duality is collaborating with Intel to explore the security challenges of AI workloads using homomorphic encryption on Intel platforms,” Echevarria added at the event.

Enigma has developed a unique privacy protocol that uses Intel® SGX to protect data. Echevarria said Intel and Enigma will collaborate to integrated this functionality for private smart contracts on the Ethereum public ledger.

“Security is vital to our company strategy and the foundation for workloads of all kinds,” Echevarria said. “We will continue to innovate and transform our silicon chips into active participants in the threat protection lifecycle. The announcements in the cyber week highlight the value these investments provide to meet today’s cyber security needs.”

In May, Intel also partnered with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, Israeli fintech hub The Floor, and global management consulting company Accenture for a first-of-its-kind Blockchain-based new securities lending platform aimed at revolutionizing the securities lending market in Israel.