Keren Elazari

Keren Elazari is an internationally recognized cybersecurity analyst, researcher, author, and keynote speaker, and, as she cheerfully calls herself, a friendly hacker. In 2014 she became the first Israeli woman to speak on the main stage of the TED Conference, where her talk, "Hackers: the Internet's immune system," argued that hackers force us to evolve and improve. It has since been viewed millions of times and translated into 30 languages, becoming one of the most-watched cybersecurity talks on TED.com. Her authority is hard-won. A veteran of Israel Defense Forces intelligence, where she served roughly a decade, including as a cybersecurity officer, Keren holds an MA in Security Studies from Tel Aviv University and the CISSP international certification. Today she is a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University's Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center and a faculty member at Reichman University, and was formerly a teaching fellow at Singularity University in California. Over more than two decades she has advised leading security firms, innovative startups, government organizations, and Fortune 500 companies, and has delivered hundreds of keynotes across six continents for organizations including Google, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Mastercard, SAP, Allianz, PwC, UBS, and NATO. Beyond the stage, Keren is a builder of communities. She is the founder of BSidesTLV, Israel's largest security and hacker community conference, and of Leading Cyber Ladies, a global professional network for women in cybersecurity. Named to Forbes Israel's 50 most influential women, she is a featured contributor to the best-selling book Women in Tech (2016) and writes on security and technology for outlets including Scientific American, WIRED, and The Financial Times. Whether the subject is AI, ransomware, cyber warfare, or the culture of hacking itself, Keren makes a complex, high-stakes field feel understandable, and even, improbably, hopeful.