Tehila, in Hebrew, is an acronym for the Governmental Infrastructure for the Internet Era.

Tehila is the central body that provides Government Ministries and Institutions with highly secure Internet services. In this way the dangers associated with connecting these networks to the Internet is significantly reduced.

The Tehila project began in 1997, to answer the growing need of Government Ministries to be connected to the Internet, in order to:

• Provide services and information
• Make use of Internet resources
• Communicate via email with people both in Israel and worldwide.

The Tehila project aims to provide a solution to the risks associated with exposing the Government network, in terms of information security, by connecting Government Ministries with appropriate security and control measures.

Mission and Goals

The main mission of the Tehila project is to provide two main services: 

1.      Secure access to Internet services for Government users. Users receive a “service package” that meets with the specific information security requirements.

2.      Hosting of Government websites that provide information and services to the public, while using information security mechanisms to protect the data.

 The goals of the Tehila project

• To provide Government users with access to basic Internet services, while minimizing the information security risk to Government office computer systems.
• To make Internet services available to a large number of workers who require them and are unable to access them at their desks due to information security concerns.
• To build a secure platform upon which Government applications and data can appear on the Internet
• To accelerate the entry of Government offices to the Internet world, by creating an inexpensive and readily available infrastructure for creating websites.
• To provide solutions to the problems encountered when entering the Internet world with the goal of distributing information to citizens.
• To conserve resources for Government offices that are required to setup Internet infrastructures including: hardware, software and communication infrastructures.

Tehila’s Server Farm is located in the Government complex in Jerusalem. It hosts websites of Government offices and bodies that invest a great deal of effort in exposing information and online services as part of the eGovernment revolution.

A highly trained, world-class staff, maintains the Server Farm 24-hours-a-day, 7 days a week, with maximum security. Entrance to the Server Farm is permitted only to authorized personnel and is departmentalized using advanced protection methods, including retinal scans, use of smart cards and more.

Hosting possibilities vary – from server and/or database hosting on the Tehila hosts to hosting of independent servers in the Server Farm, while taking advantage of the security and maintenance Tehila provides.

The Communications Center infrastructure is protected using various means: flood warning equipment, fire detection and extinguishing systems, and air conditioning systems, which maintain optimal temperature conditions.

The Server Farm is also protected by a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) system that guarantees that the system will remain available even during emergency situations.

The Server Farm is continually backed-up. Back-ups are stored at an external location.

Tehila uses a variety of resources to maintain its information security goals – beginning with a staff of Information and Communication Security experts and continuing with a variety of products and technologies of world-leading companies.

• Security systems at Tehila stopped approximately 250 attacks on Communications Systems and components of protected Government networks in 2002.
• Approximately 45 formal letters of complaint were sent daily.
• 90,000 attempted attacks were seen, with 14,000 of them considered of high quality.
• Tehila’s automatic testing systems tested approximately 6.7 million objects in surfing traffic from within government offices – almost 2.5 billion objects. Approximately 19,000 were tainted with harmful software.
• Tehila’s mail servers process an average of 85,000 messages daily – about 30GB of data. On days with email attacks, there may be as many as 550,000 messages.
• Each day approximately 100 virus attacks and attacks of other harmful software are avoided. On days with email attacks, up to 80,000 harmful messages are received.