CYBER SECURITY – WE NEED (IN)FORMATION

There are almost 4 billion users connected to the network on planet earth and in the last 5 years, above all, they have practically doubled. The number of data that travels on the network every day is like the universe, infinite and expanding. To be clear, every 60 seconds 38 million messages are sent on WhatsApp and 187 million emails, over 4 million videos are viewed on YouTube and 3.8 million queries are made on Google.

The platforms, all those that have allowed the improvement of our lives, are based on the analysis of our data. If we are increasingly connected, however, it means that we are increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks. Not only through the old PC or mobile devices, but also through all the smart objects with which we are filling our homes. These brief considerations would be enough to understand that the issue of data protection and especially cyber security is central in our personal lives, but it is also central to the security of institutions and the defense of the economy of nations. In short, it does not only concern computer scientists, hackers, security experts, but each of us, as individuals, as workers and as citizens.

According to some studies, cyber attacks in Italy grew by 31% in 2018. In November, over 3,000 public and private users suffered a cyber attack that violated 500,000 certified e-mail boxes.

And everything suggests that the situation will not improve in the short term, indeed the number of attacks and users involved will probably grow exponentially. National investments are therefore needed on the subject of cyber security in the strengthening of network infrastructures, in the digital transformation of companies and in the formation of a new awareness of the ecosystem in which we operate. Unfortunately, looking at the latest budget law, the resources made available are really scarce compared to the challenge we face. A challenge that instead IT Centric seems to have received, a company from Caserta that operates mainly in the areas of Information Technology, Telecommunications and Systems Engineering, working in Italy but also in the US and the United Arab Emirates. The company has 25 employees and is developing its skills precisely on the subject of cyber security, in particular: corporate security, infrastructure security, access security. We talked about training before. We know that every company is at risk of attack. Often a cyber attack can arise in a company for the opening of an email or an attachment. Now it is unthinkable and economically unmanageable to turn all employees into cybersecurity experts, but training your staff in a new digital awareness is a must. Equipped with competent figures on the subject will also become an inevitable, albeit complicated, business choice. Because the job market of IT professionals, and especially of cyber security experts, is particularly stressed, given the distance between the continuously growing strong demand and the scarce supply of suitable professional profiles. And here we return to the extraordinary work that the University of Naples Federico II is doing in the university center of San Giovanni a Teduccio, thanks above all to the hyper activism of Giorgio Ventre. I will never tire of explaining that attracting the world’s largest IT corporations such as Apple and Cisco has not only had a positive impact on the local economy, on the jobs created, on the start-ups. It has shown more and more that in Naples there were extraordinary human capital and the excellence of university institutions ready for the challenge of change and innovate. Not just theoretically. In fact, the strength of the Academies is the fact of having developed training centers applied to the needs of companies, that are able to provide professional figures that the job market desperately needs.

For once, Naples does not undergo the change that innovation inevitably generates, but tries to understand and guide it. News we should all be happy about.