In June, I was in Tel Aviv, Israel, to attend Cyber Week, one of the world's top cybersecurity conferences. It attracted an eclectic mix of hackers, cyber-professionals and government officials. I met start-ups hawking cyber-wares, talked shop with experts on cyber-philosophies and heard from ethical hackers (called White Hats) who spoke about the sorry state of enterprise coding.

But one thing I heard resonated the most. It came from Mr Mike Rogers, former director of the United States National Security Agency. "We cannot defend what we can't see and don't know. Ideally, the pain suffered by one attack should be a lesson learnt by many. However, the pain is repeated over and over, and nobody learns," he said during a dialogue and reminded the audience that hackers use the same cutting-edge tools and technologies that cybersecurity professionals use.