Cervello
Cervello is the rail cybersecurity platform of Opera Security, an Israeli software developer headquartered in Tel Aviv and supplying European rail operators and infrastructure managers.
The company was founded as Cervello by Roie Onn, Shaked Kafzan, and Nadav Avidan, veterans of Israel Defense Forces intelligence and special forces units who met through the Zell Entrepreneurship Program at Reichman University in Herzliya.
Cervello raised a seed round of USD 4.5m in 2019 from investors including North First Ventures and Awz Ventures.
Headcount was reported at around 30 in the Israeli technology press in 2023, concentrated at the company’s Tel Aviv research and development base.
Company name and platform structure
In 2026 the company announced that Cervello would trade as Opera Security.
The platform started in rail and has since been extended to six industry verticals: energy and utilities; rail and transit; heavy industry and process; ports, aviation and logistics; smart buildings and public venues; and defence and telecom.
Rail and transit continues to carry the Cervello name.
Core products and services
Cervello’s core offering is a software platform within cybersecurity for rail, monitoring operational technology, information technology, and Internet of Things (IoT) environments for threats.
The platform covers signalling systems, rolling stock, and trackside infrastructure from a single dashboard.
It is designed to integrate passively with existing rail architecture, without requiring changes to safety-critical control systems.
Cervello positions the platform to support compliance with rail-specific cybersecurity frameworks, including CENELEC TS 50701 and IEC 62443, alongside broader requirements such as the EU’s NIS2 directive. TS 50701 is set to be succeeded by IEC 63452, an international rail cybersecurity standard scheduled for publication in 2026.
Market position
Rail is the company’s longest-standing market for digital systems and software, and the Cervello Platform is the offering sold there.
Disclosed customers and partners include Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), which engaged Cervello and Fincons Group in 2022 to help secure railway command and control systems nationally, and the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency, which began working with the company in 2024.
The company has also worked with Thales on signalling cybersecurity for a railway operations management centre in Austria, and entered a partnership with ST Engineering in 2022 covering cybersecurity for rail operational networks.
A technology partnership with Nozomi Networks, a supplier of operational technology and Internet of Things security software, was announced in 2021.
Recent activity
In 2023, Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF) selected Cervello, working with Bynet Data Communications, to provide cybersecurity for the Tel Aviv Light Rail’s Purple Line.
The company publishes a technical blog on rail cybersecurity, including guidance on regulatory frameworks such as the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security directives, with posts appearing through the first half of 2026..
