With a talk dedicated to why multi-domain situational awareness is key to enforce preparedness and cyber resilience of critical infrastructures, Giacomo Speretta, vice president cyber security marketing, business development and sales strategy at Leonardo, shared company’s experience in guarantee the physical and cyber security of economics and social entities and national critical infrastructure, including hospitals, airports, energy plants.
“In the current scenario, where global pandemic gave a big push towards digitalization, there are key roles for both the physical security of infrastructure and digital protection from cyber threats, which are increasingly challenging and constantly evolving – explained Speretta. – In fact, the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the integration of information technology (IT) systems and operational technology (OT) systems, have introduced an important element of convergence between the physical and digital world and as a consequence converging threats.”
The theme of security concerns the whole of society, starting from government and defence organisations, national industry and businesses providing critical services as hospitals, power plants, oil and gas platforms, water facilities, transport and TELCO. “All of these services are key elements of our everyday life, and this means that any interruption would severely harm citizens and businesses, and even compromising national and international security” told Speretta.
To protect these connected networks, it’s not possible to foresee a single solution, but a matrix of technologies, processes and activities which, together, can avoid or mitigate the impact of an attack or a failure. This starts with improving situational awareness, a crucial element for enhancing the resilience of physical and digital infrastructure, as well as anticipating problems and adopting adequate countermeasures.
“In Leonardo, we developed the “X-2030” platform, an innovative control room system based on C5I concept (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber & Intelligence) integrating operational procedures, decision support processes, radio communications able to process heterogeneous information coming from several sources including web and social media to create valuable intelligence information, and leveraging on technologies for a superior situational awareness, able to support decision makers to take the right actions also to support major events” explained Speretta.
“The company also supports individual nation states and large corporations, including financial institutions, with comprehensive cyber solutions and training. This greatly increases the cyber security and response capabilities of an organisation, improving its resilience” concluded Speretta.
Leonardo’s track record includes delivering cyber security expertise to NATO since 2012, to protect the Alliance’s ICT infrastructures, and – more recently – the agreement with Qatar Foundation for the delivery of a Cyber Range & Training system to Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI). This platform will facilitate the immersive training of cyber security operators and allow the Institute to assess the resilience of digital infrastructure against potential cyber-attacks.
About Leonardo
Leonardo, a global high-technology company, is among the top ten world players in Aerospace, Defence and Security and Italy’s main industrial company. Organized into five business divisions, Leonardo has a significant industrial presence in Italy, the Unit ed Kingdom, Poland and the USA, where it also operates through subsidiaries that include Leonardo DRS (defense electronics), and joint ventures and partnerships: ATR, MBDA, Telespazio, Thales Alenia Space and Avio. Leonardo competes in the most important international markets by leveraging its areas of technological and product leadership (Helicopters, Aircraft, Aerostructures, Electronics, Cyber Secur ity and Space).
Listed on the Milan Stock Exchange (LDO), in 2019 Leonardo recorded consolidated revenues of €13.8 billion and invested €1.5 billion in Research and Development. The company has been part of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) since 2010 and has been named as sustainability global leader in the Aerospace & Defence sector for the second year in a row of DJSI in 2020.
