Adv. Deborah Housen-Couriel
Fellow, International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), Reichman University, Herzliya; Chief Legal Officer and VP Regulation, Konfidas Ltd.; Advisory Board, Federmann Cyber Security Center, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Adv. Deborah Housen-Couriel is the Chief Legal Officer and VP Regulation for Konfidas Digital Ltd., a leading Israeli cybersecurity, data protection, and crisis management company advising on high-level strategies for legal planning and regulatory compliance in the areas of cyber preparedness, data protection, corporate governance, and cyber incident response. Her practice at Konfidas is supported by ongoing research on critical cybersecurity issues.
Adv. Housen-Couriel experience at the international level includes her work as a member of the International Group of Experts that drafted the 2017 Tallinn 2.0 manual on state activity in cyberspace; as a Core Expert for the Manual on International Law Applicable to Military Uses of Outer Space (MILAMOS) project; and as a member of the Editorial Board of the McGill Encyclopedia of International Space Law. She has also served on the Advisory Board for the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise and as a member of the Legal Research Advisory Group for the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace. Deborah was previously part of the International Law Association’s Study Group on Cybersecurity, Terrorism, and International Law, and served as Vice Chair of the American Society of International Law’s Law and Technology Interest Group. She is certified with the IBITGQ EU General Data Protection Regulation Foundation and Practitioner (GDPR F and P).
Adv. Housen-Couriel is currently a member of the Advisory Board for Hebrew University’s Federmann Cyber Security Research Center and a Research Fellow at Reichman University’s Institute for Counter-Terrorism. She also teaches cybersecurity law and regulation at Hebrew University Law School and Reichman University, focusing on the interaction among public international law, domestic legal systems, and technological developments in cyberspace. She has served as a guest lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Executive Education Program on Cybersecurity: The Intersection of Policy and Technology.
Previously, Adv. Housen-Couriel was a research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center at Tel Aviv University and at the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions at Haifa University. Between 2007 and 2014, she served as Director of the Wexner Foundation’s Israel Fellowship Program, working to develop public leadership at the highest levels in Israel and the United States in partnership with the Harvard Kennedy School. Before that, she was Director of the Department of Regulation and International Treaties and worked in the Director-General’s Bureau at the Israeli Ministry of Communications (1994–2005). In that role, she participated in Israel’s delegations to the WTO, the ITU, the telecommunications aspects of the Oslo Accords negotiations, and the peace treaty discussions with Jordan.
In 2011, Adv. Housen-Couriel co-chaired the Regulation and Policy Committee of the National Cyber Initiative launched by the Prime Minister’s Office, and in 2013–14, she served on the National Cyber Bureau’s Public Committee on the Cyber Professions. She is currently researching polycentric regulatory models for information sharing to mitigate cyber threats.
Adv. Housen-Couriel received her B.A. in History and Anthropology (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Wellesley College and the École de Sciences Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris; her LL.B. and LL.M. (cum laude) from Hebrew University; and her MC-MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government as a Wexner Foundation Fellow in 2000–2001.
