NSO appoints ex-US Ambassador David Friedman as chair

Israeli cyberattack company NSO Group has appointed former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman as its chairman. NSO was acquired last month by a group of US investors headed by Hollywood producer Robert Simonds.

Friedman and the American investment team will undertake vigorous efforts to get the company removed from the US Commerce Department’s blacklist, thus making it easier to sell systems to federal authorities, and buy equipment and software from US companies.

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Friedman’s appointment was made after the transfer of ownership of the company from Luxembourg-based Dufresne holdings group, owned by NSO cofounder, Omri Lavie, to the US investment group, which has injected several tens of millions of dollars into the company and erased debts totaling $600 million. The company has stressed in a press release, “The three cofounders of NSO no longer have any holding in the company.”

In addition to removing NSO from the blacklist, the company also hopes for a change in US and Israeli policy on distribution of cyberattack and spyware tools, after the Biden era, which greatly restricted Israeli companies in the field and NSO in particular. This not only harmed business results and the loss of many customers but also caused a decline in the development of new intelligence software and even negatively affected the intelligence picture for Western and pro-Western militaries during the war in Israel.

At the beginning of 2022, Israel’s Ministry of Defense, at the request of the US, tightened conditions for the sale cyberattack tools and limited them to a list of some 30 democratic countries only, with many of Israel’s allies – including the UAE and India – excluded from the list. This damaged NSO’s business performance and led other Israeli companies, such as Candiru or Quadream, to sell their assets or even close their doors.

“Despite the negative and largely unfair criticism directed against the company, you work with pride and endless dedication to providing advanced technologies to protect security and save innocents,” Friedman told NSO’s employees this morning at the company’s offices in Glilot near Tel Aviv.

NSO said it will continue to operate from Israel under the supervision of the Ministry of Defense “While expanding its global activities and striving to renew activities in the US.”

Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on November 9, 2025.

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