Wednesday, 7 April 2021

Don’t try to steal in the thief’s house - week 10

 As a European person, I admire the American culture for two particular aspects, the first being that everyone has given a second chance (admitted is strong enough to survive after failure) and the second, being the great amount of pragmatism when comes to “use” people who can benefit the society, even if controversial. In Italy a person like Kevin Mitnick maybe would never have been jailed because of the lacklustre and slow judiciary system and probably would have never become an influencer for the good because of the hacker stigma.

Like many other great American stories Mr. Mitnick had a second chance in life and after paying his debt with the society he put his skills and his fame to work for the good. He entered the process to educate people on how to protect themselves from IT risks. Mitnick analysed what are the sources of security…   

…and he came with the three points formula:

·       Technology: networks, firewalls, antiviruses...

·       Training: awareness of different attacks

·       Policy: set procedures and requirements

Let us try to use this formula to analyse the situation in Italy.

When coming to technology and its networks Italy is quite advanced, as a dense populated first world country, the peninsula benefits of good It infrastructure network as highlighted in the NATO CDDCOE country report liked below. An ever-increasing focus is given to Network security.

Talking about policies and legal requirements for IT security the same report tells that Italy is also in good shape. The country has to complies whit the many European Union requirements both the legal and institutional framework and those requirements are increasing and improving year by year.

Perhaps looking at the Mitnick formula Italy’s Achilles’s heel is in training, there is no serious computer science education in the schools' curricula nor there are mainstream programs of public awareness to educate the general public, this leads to the common misconception that IT treats are all technical and can be simply stopped installing the best antivirus, the concept of “cyber engineering” is out of common sense and doesn’t translate in any Italian word.

All considered the situation in Italy in terms of Cybersecurity is not that bad, perfectly in line with most of the western countries, none the less, the country should implement programs to educate better on the topic the younger at school (hopefully, they may evangelize the older too!). Various programs can also be undertaken to educate the general public, the involvement of some testimonials, celebrities and respected people, can help to reach even the less tech-savvy ones. Definitely to have an Italian Kevin Mitnick, in his good-guy version, of course, may help.

 

Sources:

NATO-CCDCOE: National Cyber Security Organisation: Italy

https://ccdcoe.org/library/publications/national-cybersecurity-organisation-italy/

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