23-02-2024

Roger Cataldi, CISO & Head of Group Security IT Policy for Almaviva, talked about “the market and the cybersecurity scenario in 2023”, asking the question “Are current investments effective?”

“The sectors that need to be worked on because they are the most fragile are those involving all critical infrastructures, especially emergency healthcare services, future telemedicine services, and the field of water resource management, for obvious reasons of large-scale impact,” he said.

What is the strategy? “To think preventively, today not tomorrow, about how to make our digital surface more robust by design. It’s one of the most important challenges of the post-NRRP period because an application on the Internet, even if well-designed and implemented to the best of its ability, could become vulnerable and prone to attack after just a few hours or days. Therefore, the real challenge that must be addressed is that of continuous and secure monitoring, with models and processes that are no longer reactive, but rather proactive and preventive, with a strong propensity for intelligence.”

In his second speech, on the topic of AI and cybersecurity, Cataldi emphasized that the motto of St. Thomas, "If I don't see, I don't believe," is obsolete in the digital age. “The advent of deepfake techniques is profoundly altering dynamics, requiring online users to pay greater attention to the veracity of the content which they view.

The brandjacking campaign, intercepted by our Cyber Threat Defense Center group, was conducted with the help of AI and using the Deepfake Audio technique for audiovisual manipulation. Our group identified a deceptive advertisement broadcast through a sponsored post on Facebook that replicates content aired on a major Italian television station regarding an alleged effective medication for arthritis and osteoarthritis.

The phenomenon of brandjacking combined with deepfakes, which are increasingly widespread, is also capable of seriously threatening political movements, such as the presidential elections in the United States, which will use content-sharing platforms as their primary means of dissemination. It would behoove us to invest in greater detection efforts.”