TEL AVIV, ISRAEL – IDF (Israel Defense Forces) former Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General (res.) Moshe Yaalon, has joined Information Security Company Checkmarx. Mr. Yaalon will serve as a member of Checkmarx's Advisory Board along with such security experts as Zvi Gutterman, CEO of IT Structures and co-founder of Safend, and Paul Kurtz, a former senior director on the White House’s National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council during the Clinton and Bush administrations.

Checkmarx was founded in 2006 with the support of Naiot Venture Accelerator of the Ofer Hi-Tech Group, with the vision of providing a comprehensive solution for automated Security Code Review. The company pioneered the concept of a query-language-based solution for identifying technical and logical vulnerabilities in the code. Checkmarx’s technology is used by large corporations as well as small and medium R&D companies.

Checkmarx was founded by Maty Siman, a former IDF IT security expert, who also served at the Prime Minister's Office as a senior IT security consultant. Checkmarx's CEO, Emmanuel Benzaquen, brings to Checkmarx more than 15 years of technology and business experience within the Semiconductor, Software and IT fields. He served in various industry senior management positions of which Embedded Performance Inc. (EPI), sold in 2005 to Mentor Graphics (NASDAQ: MENT), and ARC Semiconductor, which completed its IPO in 2000 (LSE: ARK).

According to Mr. Yaalon, "Checkmarx leads a novel approach to dealing with code vulnerabilities. The technology permits to identify potential code breaks with virtually zero false-positive and quickly issue real time warnings during the development stage and beyond. In the real world, the ability to thoroughly test security procedures in advance and provide real time warnings with minimum false positives is critical. As in the real world, warnings cannot stop attacks – there is a need for prevention by security forces. The same is true for software: there is a need for a systematic solution which can diagnose and help fix security vulnerabilities in the code before hackers can take advantage of them."

Mr. Benzaquen said: "we are thrilled to welcome Mr. Yaalon on board. Checkmarx's Advisory Board is now comprised of a number of world renowned experts who represent the full spectrum of the physical to the virtual world and we look forward to working with them in introducing our solution to the market".

About Naiot Venture Accelerator

Naiot is an early seed venture capital investor, a subsidiary of Ofer Hi-Tech of the Ofer Brothers Group. Naiot invests in the IT, semiconductor and medical equipment markets. Over the years, Naiot's portfolio companies have raised over $200 million in follow-on investments from leading venture capital funds in Israel and in the US.