Vulnerability of the Network, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, these are just some of the topics that we often hear from newscasts online news and other information platforms, and this does not happen without reason. The modern society in which we live, which we can trace back to a physical reality, has laid its foundations on a dimension that we can not see or make fully secure, the digital one.
Cybertech Europe 2017 held in Rome the 26 and 27 September has had as its purpose to make more visible and secure a reality, such as the digital one, which is inexorably taking on a great importance in the world of services and businesses, creating a meeting point between companies and managers in both the public and private sectors, facilitating the exchange of ideas and solutions to face the challenges that technology advances.
The Cybertech Europe, organized in collaboration with Leonardo, was inaugurated by the opening speech by Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti and by an introduction by Leonardo CEO Alessandro Profumo (photo opening).
Computer security is a factor that is considered very seriously by companies, according to some estimates the cost of cybercrimes to the detriment of companies has increased by 47% in the last 5 years and the number of cyber attacks addressed to them has undergone an increase in 91 %.
Staff training is the first step in defending against these risks. The human factor, as we are told by Benjamin Desjardin of RSA, is key in the affair and even only compliance with the most basic safety standards would be an important step forward, in fact, there is little information and risk perception between public and private companies today. from the staff.
We have just entered an era in which the Internet is not only populated by users who "surf" in the network independently, but also by digital "entities" such as home appliances, cameras, sensors and medical devices, which share a large amount of data and that are intrinsically unsafe or hardly defensible against cyber attacks, this new internet is defined internet of things (IoT) because it is populated not only by people but also by things; there are various estimates of the number of digital entities, some speak of 20 billion devices connected to the network.
During the conference Gian Paolo Meneghini, Italian representative in the European Parliament, tells us that cybersecurity is a topic of major interest for the European Union, along with the themes of digital transformation of companies, IoT and 3D printing. The creation of a common front among states and associations, together with the recognition of cybercrimes and the possibility of carrying out IT investigations in the Union without having the barriers of territorial borders could act as a deterrent to many crimes.
These are just some of the first European security measures, but what happens in Italy?
Elio Catania of Confindustria Digitale tells us that Italy has not invested in digital technology and growth in this sector is substantially lower than in other countries.
Among the speakers, the commissioner of Ostia, prefect Domenico Vulpiani, former head of DIGOS in Rome and former director of the Italian postal police service, expressed his ideas and concerns about the disinformation and disinterest in computer security issues in many Italian public administration, where the security of information and personal data should be maximum. Only in the last year Italian leaders have begun to turn their attention to these issues.
In Italy the work to be done is still a lot but our country can take as an example the work that is already being done by other states, European and not.
As already mentioned, the company of the near future will be dominated in the aspects of mobility, energy, health and production by a strong digital and smart component that will bring great advantages in terms of productivity and profit, but it presents great uncertainties in terms of safety .
To combat the aggravation of these scenarios Israel, one of the most advanced nations in the world in terms of information security, is training young people since elementary school, with the aim of having, in the near future, a greater number of computer scientists ready to fight cyber threats. Unfortunately, we certainly can not say that we have a similar situation in Italy, where information technology is just dealt with during the school years.
Israel could certainly provide us with a good example to follow in terms of education in relation to the risks related to a technology that is changing our society at a speed that, until a few years ago, we would never have expected.
Another nation at the forefront in this sector to be taken as a model of behavior is Estonia and among the guests Marina Kaljurand, former foreign minister and Estonian ambassador to the USA, tells us that despite being Estonia a small state that counts about one and a half million inhabitants, for years it has distinguished itself for its primates in the digital world, for example being the first nation in the world to have recognized access to the internet as a right for its citizens or to be the founder of the e-Residency . In this last year, a task force led by the Estonian Ministry of Communications has set to work to define and regulate artificial intelligence from a legal point of view, especially on the responsibilities related to algorithms of deep-learning, which are not difficult to define from a technical point of view, but rather ethical.
The prospect of new investments by the Union and the creation of a European front to combat cyber threats is one that bodes well for a safer future for companies, services and citizens where theInternet of Things it can be monitored by creating new development platforms, designed to be "by design" safe and regulated by international standards.
These just mentioned are just some of the many topics covered during the Cybertech Europe 2017, which during the two days of the conference recorded more than 13.000 participants with more than 200 start-up and companies that presented their products to the show.
Cybertech renews its invitation to interested parties for its next edition in Tel-Aviv in Israel, which will take place between 29 and 31 January 2018.
