Paragon Solutions

Paragon Solutions is an Israeli Spyware company. Paragon has tried to market itself as more responsible than other spyware vendors especially as competitors like NSO Group and Intellexa have been involved in scandals.

Founded in 2019 by former commander of Unit 8200 Ehud Schneorson as well as Idan Nurick, Igor Bogudlov, Liad Avraham and Ehud Barak.

Sourced reportedly told Forbes that Battery Ventures had put between $5 and $10 million into Paragon.

According to the Financial Times, after the discovery of Pegasus on the phones of associates of Jamal Khashoggi, "Paragon declined Israeli government requests to replace Pegasus with Graphite in the Saudi armoury".

In 2023, US president Joe Biden signed Executive Order 14093 which was "seen by experts as targeting NSO, while carving out a space for companies like Paragon to continue selling similar spyware, but only to the closest of US allies".

In 2024, AE Industrial Partners reportedly acquired Paragon for over half a billion dollars.

In 2025, WhatsApp claimed to have disrupted a campaign by Paragon targeting around 90 users, including journalists and members of civil society.

According to Citizen Lab, graphite is spyware sold by Paragon which allows "access to the instant messaging applications on a device, rather than taking complete control of everything on a phone".

Paragon reportedly cut ties with the Italian government after determining that the Italian government had broken “the terms of service and ethical framework it had agreed under its Paragon contract”.

Targets of the Italian government reportedly included Francesco Cancellato the editor in chief of Fanpage.it, Luca Casarini the founder of Mediterranea Saving Humans, Husam El Gomati who has been a vocal critic of Italy and its dealings in Libya and Father Mattia Ferrari an Italian priest who has a close relationship with Pope Francis.

Paragon sells to the United States. The New York Times reported that the Biden administration allowed the Drug Enforcement Administration to use Graphite. In 2024, a 2 million dollar contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement was reportedly paused and placed under compliance review, "to review and verify compliance with Executive Order 14093". According to Wired, experts said that, "the level of seriousness with which the US government approaches the compliance review of the Paragon contract will influence international trust in the executive order". Paragon reportedly hired WestExec Advisors.

Citizen Lab "identified a subset of suspected Paragon deployments, including in Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Israel, and Singapore" and "surfaced potential links between Paragon Solutions and the Canadian Ontario Provincial Police".

• Surveillance abuse