Cyber security today: a shared vision, beyond national borders

Digital technologies are more and more an integral part of our daily lives. It is estimated that in 2025 there will be 80 billion devices connected to a surprising internet traffic of 3.3 Zettabytes per year.

Leonardo, 24 September 2017

Digital technologies are more and more an integral part of our daily lives. It is estimated that in 2025 there will be 80 billion devices connected to a surprising internet traffic of 3.3 Zettabytes per year.*

The quality of digital infrastructure and the ability to protect the cyber physical ecosystem into which modern society is transforming will in the foreseeable future be key factors in determining the level of economic prosperity and in attracting international investment.

In this context, digital threats take on an enormous value. According to some projections, the impact of the cybernetic threat in the next 5 years** is estimated at US$8 billion and 5 billion information files will be stolen in 2020.

Recently, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, in his speech on the State of the Union, highlighted the relevance of the cyber threat, underlining the need for a pan-European approach to the creation of new instruments, including, in particular, a European Cyber Security Agency, with the aim of helping Member States defend themselves.

Today, we need to face and fight an industrialised kind of cybercrime that requires, in order to withstand this delicate evolutionary phase, a marked sensibility and a decisive change of paradigm. In addition to cooperation between the various countries, a new model of public-private collaboration needs to be built to ensure innovation and at the same time provide the necessary security to enable and safeguard it. High-technology companies, and in particular those in the Defence and Security sectors, have a key role to play in supporting national capabilities.

THE LEONARDO APPROACH: THE CONTINUOUS MEASURING OF RISK

Leonardo has been at the forefront of the development of solutions to security threats for years and has been able to provide a comprehensive and systemic approach that covers the entire lifecycle of cybersecurity programmes. Leonardo’s experience in this field, within its own laboratories and centres of excellence, is enhanced every day through collaboration and synergies with the best academies and national institutions in the countries in which it operates, cooperating as well as with qualified partners to integrate their best-of-breed technology.

There are two key areas that summarise Leonardo’s strategy on these fronts: “Business-Driven Cyber Security” and “Borderless Intelligence”.

Business-Driven Cyber Security

In the digital economy, an organisation is successful if it is open, networked, global and able to communicate on multiple interfaces. The perimeter then widens, new channels are opened and the perspective becomes one of continuous exchange.

It is, therefore, not enough to think of a general and undifferentiated network and data protection policy. For this reason, Leonardo has centred its approach to a business-driven cybersecurity, focused on business processes and system continuity, even in the face of a cyberattack.

Minimising attack surfaces, implementing active defence procedures, ensuring continuous monitoring of physical and logical security events, implementing “secure-by-design” solutions (safe from the design stage), introducing cyber resilience features on platforms: these are the guidelines on which Leonardo each day focuses its abilities. By leveraging its long-standing expertise and experience in designing critical systems in the Aerospace, Defence, and Security sectors, Leonardo is able to offer its own solutions and services to critical infrastructure, governments, intelligence agencies, police forces and enterprises.

Leonardo’s approach is based on the continuous risk measurement associated with each entity that makes up its own information ecosystem (processes, people, applications, etc.). It is possible to instantly calculate the risk associated with a particular business process by simultaneously analysing the activities detected by security devices on your network and the inherent new intelligence information threats coming from the darknet, open source and underground worlds.

Borderless Intelligence

The “Borderless Intelligence” approach, in turn, incorporates all the requirements for going beyond the boundaries known to date, with a capability for continuous analysis, allowing you to respond to the ever-increasing attacks and threats which are more powerful every day.

To face an extremely dynamic scenario, at the same time, a vision is required that transcends today’s boundaries as well as offering increased efforts on prevention, cooperation and transparency in cyber incidents.

If digital security has focused so far on how to react to an attack, today the new frontier is represented by the development of cyber intelligence tools that are capable of anticipating moves by the enemy.

Leonardo is at the forefront of this field with sophisticated systems, such as the Intelligence Operation Centre (IOC), specifically focused on open source information analysis, and a comprehensive suite of products and services devoted to automating the collection and management information for police forces and government agencies.

*source: IDC
**source: Juniper Networks