During August, the Lazio region’s data center and Tuscany’s health care agency were hit by cyberattacks. Italy’s Minister of Technological Innovation recently warned that as many as 90 percent of the country’s public administration servers may be vulnerable. Prior to this, hospitals in Rome and Milan, and some large corporations had been hit with ransomware attacks.
According to reporting by ZDNet, an estimated €11,15bn portion of the €261 billion EU-funded National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), plus some national funding, will be allocated for the “digitalization, innovation and security of the public administration” in Italy.
The funding will help the recently established Agenzia per la Cybersicurezza Nazionale (ACN) build its staff and consolidate currently-disparate resources under a single agency umbrella and help it define and coordinate Italian cybersecurity strategy and initiatives in coming years. Inter-agency coordination and public awareness are both ripe for improvement.
Read the full report by ZDNet (Sept. 3, 2021)
Learn more about ACN (by Cybersecurity 360, Auto-translated by Google Translate)
Why it matters
Cyberattacks enable criminals and nation-state actors to access and steal valuable private data that can then be turned against consumers by pirates who buy such data to conduct attacks of their own.
Agencies in the EU and in individual European countries, including Italy, have been effective in their fight against piracy, participating in many anti-piracy operations across multiple countries, partnered with country-level and international/multi-national law enforcement and judicial entities.
