“With Cybershield, we are looking for ideas that can compete at an international level”
A chat with Alessandro Curioni, Founder of DI.GI. Academy and professor at the Catholic University of Milan and member of the advisory board of our Cybershield acceleration program
AI can provide new solutions against cyber threats, but AI itself makes attackers' weapons (starting with simple email phishing) increasingly refined. “We are experiencing a moment of great euphoria that encourages the development of intelligent algorithms — says Alessandro Curioni, Founder of DI.GI. Academy — especially in terms of investments, such a thing has not been seen since the development of the Network, in the late nineties, but we still need to understand what concrete results the rapid progress of these technologies will produce and take into account dual-use also in the field of cybersecurity”.
Faced with the increasing risks, Curioni emphasizes the need for specific training, who is part of the advisory board of the Cybershield acceleration program, created by Nana Bianca with the National Cybersecurity Agency and C*Sparks, and who is also a professor of information security for the Catholic University of Milan: “I would expect that greater awareness of the risks associated with the use of the most common tools would already be discussed starting from the education system, because 8 times out of 10 it is human error that causes accidents of security and being digital natives is by no means a guarantee of greater control.”
Today more than ever, the vulnerability of an entire system depends on the lack of training and therefore on a lack of awareness of cyber risks, and in particular of those SMEs fundamental to the development of the Italian economic fabric that are the most exposed to risks: recent research (Grenke Italia, Cerved Group and Clio Security) shows that 72.7% of Italian SMEs have never carried out training activities in the field of cybersecurity, 73.3% do not know what a ransomware attack is, while 43% do not have a cybersecurity manager. And still 26% have almost no protection systems and only 1 in 4 companies (22%) has a 'segmented' network, that is, more controllable.
Italian legislation is trying to run for cover and according to Curioni, the Cyber Bill under consideration by the Senate, which involves, among other things, the introduction of new figures of crime and the tightening of penalties for abusive access to computer systems “may work as a deterrent, but to change things, we must work on skills and on the use of advanced technologies.”
Cybershield, the acceleration program for startups focused on cybersecurity, can be an important tool to give visibility to Italian solutions capable of competing at an international level: “We are sure that our country can also export valid ideas in this sector - Curioni comments - perhaps focusing on technologies where international competitors work less, for example on industrial networks and IoT security, to conquer interesting market shares”.
Curioni's advice to startups is not to underestimate the communication of their project: “In the background noise given by the continuous flow of information in which we live 24 hours a day, we need to find a way to communicate well the innovative potential of a proposal. Think about how Apple managed to enter the world of smartphones that 99% belonged to the Blackberry, or how Elon Musk who, with a 250-character tweet, moved billions of dollars to the Neuralink project. Through Cybershield, we can better communicate the projects that we will select for the acceleration path.”
