McAfee will close its Israel development center on January 21, sources close to the matter have informed "Globes." The cybersecurity company's development center in Tel Aviv's Ramat Hahayal has 60 employees including 50 R&D employees and 10 sales staff. Most employees will be laid off.
McAfee, best known for its antivirus products, is expected to move its Tel Aviv operations overseas in order to cut costs. McAfee has declined to comment on the matter.
McAfee's R&D operations in Israel have been headed by Cohavit Almagor since September 2019 while commercial operations are led by Yaniv Nezri.
McAfee's development operations in Israel are based on the acquisition of three startups - compliance vendor Onigma, which it bought for $20 million in 2006, database security company Sentrigo, which it bought for $30-40 million in 2011, and intelligence security company Insightix, which it bought for $4-5 million in 2012.
Onigma founder Liad Agmon said that he was not surprised by the closure, which he blamed on the strength of the shekel, and government indifference to the needs of the high tech industry
In recent years McAfee has been focusing on cloud security products.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on January 12, 2021
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