Fujitsu Partners With Ben-Gurion University On Joint AI Research Center

Japan’s Fujitsu and Israel’s BGN Technologies, the technology transfer company of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), will partner together, following the signing of a three-year comprehensive joint research agreement to develop technologies and solutions to contribute to the realization of safe, real-world applications of AI and machine learning technologies.

The newly-established Fujitsu Cybersecurity Center of Excellence in Israel (Fujitsu CCoE IL) will host a team of approximately 20 researchers including Prof. Yuval Elovici, who leads the BGU Cyber Security Research Center and will head the lab, as well as Prof. Asaf Shabtai.

The initiative’s goal is to accelerate joint research and development into technologies that offer solutions to threats posed to AI models and machine learning, improving the trustworthiness and security of AI-based systems and software that increasingly impact our daily lives.

AI and machine learning technologies present an undoubted opportunity for growth, however, that same technology in the hands of nefarious actors also poses significant risks – with the need to improve AI security an urgent priority.

Hostile entities use increasingly sophisticated techniques to threaten critical infrastructure and systems by stealing and leaking confidential information contained in AI datasets. For instance, adding special noises to video data can cause the AI to misidentify people or misidentify actions. Fujitsu CCoE IL will address these issues through research on AI security to detect such attacks, protect against adversarial access to AI systems, and make the models more robust against attacks.

As part of their new partnership, Fujitsu and BGU will focus on research that confronts these threats to make AI technologies safer and more trustworthy. One of the center’s initial research projects will apply an AI model to detect new, unknown types of threats, such as attacks on drones and fraud in network communications and develop technologies able to appropriately cope with the rapidly evolving attack methods.

“I’m confident that the establishment of the Fujitsu CCoE IL will yield a variety of promising new security technologies for AI, and I look forward to a fruitful partnership with Ben-Gurion University as we work in tandem to resolve some of the challenges facing our increasingly digitized society,” said Vivek Mahajan, Chief Technology Officer of Fujitsu Limited.

Prof. Elovici expressed his delight at partnering with Fujitsu, which is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company offering a full range of technology products, solutions and services, with more than 126,000 employees in excess of 100 countries. “Together we can make systems that are based on AI more robust to attacks that focus on the AI component,” he commented.