Tirana Cyber Summit Translates Israel Partnership into Industrial Cooperation

Prime Minister Edi Rama, four cabinet ministers, the central bank governor, forty Israeli companies, and leading Israeli cybersecurity experts convened in Tirana for the first Israel-Albania Cyber Summit, structured around practical deliverables rather than declarations.

by Aurel Cara (Tirana)

The first Israel-Albania Cyber Summit, held Tuesday at the MAK Albania Hotel, brought forty Israeli technology firms into direct contact with the Albanian government’s full economic security architecture: the prime minister, the ministers of interior, defense, energy and infrastructure, and finance, the governor of the Bank of Albania, and the head of the National Cybersecurity Authority. After ministerial framing in the morning, each Israeli company received a ten minute slot to present capabilities, followed by two hours of one on one matchmaking with Albanian institutional and corporate counterparts.

The event was organized by Improvate, the Israeli international partnerships platform led by Ronit Hasin Hochman and Irina Nevzlin, which builds commercial channels between Israeli technology firms and partner governments. The closing speaker was Yigal Unna, who served as Director General of the Israel National Cyber Directorate from 2018 to 2022, the years that bracketed Albania’s most consequential cyber crisis and the Israeli response to it. Israel’s Ambassador to Tirana, Galit Peleg, hosted the welcome reception at her residence the previous evening.

The summit sits inside a bilateral architecture that has thickened considerably over the past eighteen months. In March 2025 the two governments signed a joint declaration on health cooperation, including a strategic partnership between Albania’s University Hospital Center Mother Teresa and Israel’s Sheba Medical Center. In July 2025 they signed a strategic defense agreement between the Albanian and Israeli Ministries of Defense, with Elbit Systems among the first Israeli firms moving into Albanian industrial sites, including drone assembly and light weapons production at the former copper facility in Rubik. In January 2026 Prime Minister Edi Rama addressed a plenary session of the Knesset in Jerusalem, framing the relationship as one rooted, in his words, in long moral memory rather than transactional convenience. Existing bilateral instruments cover mutual assistance between the Albanian Investment Development Agency and the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute, and an air services agreement.

Cybersecurity is the file with the longest operational record. In July 2022 the Iranian state launched a wiper campaign against Albanian government systems in retaliation for Tirana’s decision to host the Mujahedin e Khalq opposition community on humanitarian grounds. Albania severed diplomatic relations with Tehran, attributed the attack publicly, and rebuilt its public service infrastructure with technical support from Israel, the United States, and the United Arab Emirates.

Rama returned to that sequence in his opening address. “We opened our doors to several thousand Iranians who are in opposition, and we did not do it for any political motive,” he said. “We did it because their lives were in danger and nobody wanted to save them. This came with revenge from the Iranian regime that could not tolerate it, and they attacked us. They attacked what we had built tirelessly for years to transform our public services from a completely corrupt and bleak system that served citizens through bribes into a completely fast, transparent, fee free system delivered online.”

He framed the recovery in present tense. “We were very pleased at that moment to see Israel act as a friend and offer us assistance,” Rama said. “Thanks to that help, and to the help of our very dear friends from the Emirates, plus several experts from the United States, we survived this attack. Today I can say with pride that we have a completely different level of cyber defense, once again thanks to cooperation with Israel and with Israeli talent.”

The prime minister grounded the broader partnership in an idea he attributed to the economist Ricardo Hausmann. “Countries do not differ from one another on the basis of what they possess, but on the basis of what they know,” Rama said. “Israel is the most extraordinary example of what difference can be made based on knowledge and not on resources.” He recalled the 1993 visit of Shimon Peres to Tirana, when the then foreign minister was asked what advice he would offer a small country emerging from rural isolation. “Peres said something I never forget. He said, I cannot give you advice, only a reminder. You can make an omelette from an egg, but you cannot make an egg from an omelette.”

Interior Minister Besfort Lamallari treated the 2022 attack as the inflection point that produced Albania’s current posture. “That attack was not simply a technical incident,” he told the summit. “It was an attack against our critical infrastructure, against our institutions, and against the trust of our citizens. But it was also a turning point.” Lamallari widened the frame to the platform economy. “Albania has strengthened cooperation with international companies such as Meta Platforms and TikTok to address online threats, harmful content, fraud, and issues affecting Albanian citizens in digital spaces,” he said. “We have also worked to improve protections for children online and to ensure that digital platforms do not become environments for abuse, manipulation, or exploitation.” He closed on the cross border architecture. “Cyber threats do not recognize borders, and therefore our response cannot be limited by borders either. Our vision is clear: a modern, digital, innovative, and secure Albania.”

Defense Minister Ermal Nufi placed cybersecurity inside Albania’s NATO framework. “Cyber is now one of the four fields of defense, alongside air, land, and sea,” he said. “It is very important to understand that this dimension is crucial to the resilience of all our systems.” Nufi tied the cooperation directly to the 2022 attack and what followed. “It is said that usually you find your friends in distress and hard situations, and that is where we have found our friends from Israel, from the United States, and also from European countries.” He pointed to the Cyber Command established within the Armed Forces with United States support, alongside the civilian agencies AKSHI and AKSK, and to recent defensive operations during attempted intrusions targeting the Albanian Parliament and the national postal operator. “Threats continue to be present and threats are increasing,” Nufi said. Albania moved up twenty three places in the most recent ITU Global Cybersecurity Index, entering Tier 2 with a score of 86.51, and now ranks thirtieth in Europe.

The head of Albania’s National Cybersecurity Authority, Bledar Kazia, addressed the summit on the country’s current cyber posture and priority areas for modernization. AKSK is the civilian institution responsible for coordinating Albania’s cybersecurity policy, regulating critical infrastructure operators, and aligning the national framework with European Union directives, including NIS2.

The Bank of Albania governor, Gent Sejko, delivered the most technically rigorous intervention of the day, framing cyber risk as a question of financial system architecture rather than a peripheral technology concern. “We are all aware that we are living in a more insecure world, where geopolitical conflicts and tensions not infrequently take on the genuine character of hybrid warfare,” Sejko said. “In this reality, cyber attacks no longer constitute news. They are part of the daily routine.”

Sejko described cyber risk as central to financial stability and to public trust. “Cybersecurity is assessed as a critical component of financial stability and national security, and is now considered an important pillar of public trust in the financial system,” he said. “Disruptions to the functioning of critical infrastructure systems, particularly the financial system, or data leaks resulting from cyber attacks, damage the reputation and the value of both clients and institutions.” He framed the regulatory implication directly. “The Bank of Albania is convinced that the careful shift of supervisory focus, from traditional risks such as credit risk, without leaving them outside attention, toward risks such as cyber risk, is unavoidable. It is no coincidence that the European Banking Authority has defined the monitoring of cyber risk as one of its priorities for 2026.”

The central bank’s approach rests on two operational pillars. First, a horizontal cybersecurity maturity assessment built on a methodology of ninety three controls developed with assistance from the United States Treasury, covering organizational, human resources, physical, and technological security dimensions. The first round of evaluation across the entire banking system has concluded, and the second round is expected to complete in the third quarter of this year. “This process will be repeated until the Bank of Albania creates assurance regarding the appropriate degree of maturity on the part of all banks,” Sejko said. Second, regulatory alignment with the European Union’s Digital Operational Resilience Act, which entered into force in January 2025, in support of the Albanian government’s strategic objective of full EU membership by 2030. Sejko also underlined that the central bank itself is classified as part of national critical infrastructure and has invested continuously in resilient technological architecture and personnel training across all levels.

Energy and Infrastructure Minister Enea Karkaci opened with the conceptual framing the rest of the cabinet shared. “Today, cybersecurity is no longer simply a matter of technology,” he said. “It is a matter of national security, economic stability, and the protection of the public interest. At a time when critical infrastructure relies increasingly on digital systems and intelligent technologies, safeguarding them from cyber threats has become a strategic priority for every modern state.” Karkaci described an energy sector cyber posture built across three operators: the distribution system operator working to ISO 27001, NIS2, and NIST frameworks, with SIEM, EDR, MFA, and IAM/PAM systems in production; the transmission system operator running Fortinet and Radiflow architectures across SCADA and operational technology networks, with the SCADA platform classified as Critical Information Infrastructure under Albanian law; and KESH, the national power corporation, operating behind next generation firewalls with continuous penetration testing and dedicated backup systems. He closed with the policy objective. “Our objective is clear: to guarantee a secure, sustainable, and reliable energy system for Albanian citizens and the Albanian economy.”

Finance Minister Petrit Malaj framed the digitization of public finance as itself a cybersecurity question. In remarks released by the Ministry of Finance, Malaj described the integrity of Albania’s public financial systems as a strategic national priority directly linked to citizen trust, transparency, and macroeconomic stability. The ministry’s statement cited near complete digital interoperability across revenue and expenditure infrastructure, lower administrative costs, increased formalization of the economy, and stronger inter institutional information sharing as concrete outcomes of investment in digitization. Malaj singled out Israeli experience in cybersecurity and data protection as a particularly valuable reference model for harmonizing Albanian standards with the most advanced international practice, and reaffirmed the government’s commitment to strengthening the legal and institutional framework against money laundering and terrorism financing.

The Israeli vendor showcase ran the breadth of the country’s cyber ecosystem and aligned closely with the operational priorities the ministers had described. Cognyte presented Luminar, an external threat intelligence platform combining cyber threat intelligence, digital risk protection, and external attack surface management, of direct relevance to AKSK’s coordination mandate. XM Cyber demonstrated attack path management aimed at eliminating exploitable vulnerabilities before they are weaponized, of direct relevance to the SCADA and operational technology architecture Karkaci described. Israel Aerospace Industries presented its aviation cybersecurity portfolio. CyberOM by CyberNCS Group presented enterprise cybersecurity for critical organizations. ReviveSec, Power Cyber Technologies, Integrity Global, SHARDS Security, IT-GURU, DV PLAN, MultiKol, SignOnX, and CompanyLens.Ai covered operational technology resilience, voice authentication and deepfake fraud prevention, offensive security consulting, document workflow security, and AI driven defense and decision intelligence.

Unna closed the summit with a session titled “Cybersecurity: Current and Future challenges,” delivered in his current capacity at Improvate. As the official who led the Israel National Cyber Directorate during the period covering Albania’s 2022 crisis and the bilateral technical response that followed, his presence at the closing of the first formal industry summit framed the trajectory from emergency assistance to structured cooperation to commercial pipeline.

Ambassador Peleg framed the summit as the first structured channel for Israeli industry to engage Albanian critical infrastructure operators at scale, citing Israel’s commitment to strengthening the partnership through the protection of critical infrastructure, the development of national capacities, and the construction of a more secure digital future.

Rama closed his address with a passage directed at the Israeli delegation. “Never forget that for Jews, Albania is home, and it wants to remain so,” he said. “Whatever Albanians may think on various subjects, on their politics, on their government, there is one thing that is absolutely certain, and Galit, the ambassador, can guarantee it: there is no antisemitism in Albania, and Jews are always welcome here.” He noted that visits by Israeli travelers to Albania have grown approximately sevenfold since direct flights launched, from a base he acknowledged was close to zero.