Government officials, experts and business leaders from around the globe have called for combating cyber-attacks during the Cyber Week security conference held in Tel Aviv, stressing that the future war zone would be in cyberspace.

Delivering a speech at the annual cyber security event which closed on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel had prevented, mostly via cyberspace, about 50 major terrorist operations, especially by the elements of the Islamic State (IS), in dozens of countries.

He urged for "international associations."

More than 8,000 cybersecurity experts, business representatives, academics, government officials and others from more than 80 countries took part in the event to exchange knowledge, methods and ideas, according to the organizers.

Cyber warfare is evolving into a more complicated, dangerous and faster playground with the enormous capabilities of artificial intelligence, new cyber tools and viruses.

Darren Shou, vice president of strategy and research at Symantec, told Xinhua that one of the challenges is ensuring artificial intelligence's ability to respect privacy and regulations.

Shou emphasized the threat of increasingly intelligent malware. Computers operate at a tremendous scale unimaginable to human capacity. This technology, if used wrongly, could be incredibly dangerous.

Stevan Bernard, former executive vice president for Global Protection Services at Sony Pictures Entertainment, said combating large cyber-attacks is a kind of war, and the company has recruited many specialists to win this crucial battle.