Cervello
Cervello is an Israeli developer of cybersecurity software built specifically for railway operational environments, headquartered in Tel Aviv.
The company was founded by Roie Onn, Shaked Kafzan, and Nadav Avidan, veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli intelligence units who met through an entrepreneurship programme at Reichman University in Herzliya.
Cervello raised a Seed round in 2019 from investors including North First Ventures and AWZ Ventures; sources disagree on the company’s total funding to date, so no cumulative figure is given here.
The company employs several dozen people, concentrated at its Tel Aviv research and development base.
Core products and services
Cervello’s core offering is a software platform that monitors rail operational technology, IT, and IoT environments for cybersecurity 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.
Market position
Cervello works exclusively within the rail and metro sector, rather than adapting a general industrial cybersecurity product to rail.
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.
The company has also partnered with Thales on signalling cybersecurity for a rail operations centre in Austria, and with ST Engineering on cybersecurity for rail operational networks.
A separate technology partnership with Nozomi Networks, an established OT and IoT security vendor, extends Cervello’s coverage into broader operational technology visibility.
Cervello’s ownership structure includes multiple venture capital investors, in contrast to several smaller, founder-owned specialists active in the same rail cybersecurity niche.
Recent activity
In 2023, Cervello was selected to provide cybersecurity for the Tel Aviv Light Rail’s Purple Line, working alongside CAF and Bynet Data Communications.
The company maintains an active technical blog addressing rail-specific cybersecurity topics, including regulatory guidance on frameworks such as US TSA security directives.
