In 2023 the Italian cybersecurity market reached a record: 2.15 billion euros, +16% compared to 2022. 62% of large organizations increased spending, but Italy remains last among the G7 countries in terms of ratio market-GDP.
74% of companies perceived an increase in attack attempts, 12% suffered tangible consequences from cyber attacks.
56% have introduced Artificial Intelligence tools and technologies in cybersecurity, but only 22% use them extensively.
These are some data contained in the research of the Cybersecurity & Data Protection Observatory of the School of Management of the Polytechnic of Milan, presented at the conference 'Beyond Cybersecurity: between human intelligence and artificial factor'.
"To reduce the gap between Italy and other countries, a correct balance between technological investments and human capital is necessary - says Gabriele Faggioli, scientific director of the Observatory - On the one hand it is essential to grasp the potential of technologies such as AI , on the other hand, training and raising awareness of workers should not be underestimated".
In general, the majority of attacks remain attributable to cybercrime, i.e. the extortion of money, but "hacktivism actions are taking on growing importance, constituting 8% of the total attacks at a global level and 30% at an Italian level" .
Among the possible uses of Artificial Intelligence by cybercriminals are - explains the research - "the creation of more incisive and large-scale social engineering campaigns, better efficiency in identifying possible vulnerabilities and the creation of deepfakes aimed at misinformation".
The adoption of AI tools by large companies is still in an early stage, those used mainly have the functionality of identifying possible anomalies (73%), identifying new potential threats and zero-day vulnerabilities (70%) or even searching and analyze correlations between events to act preventively (70%).
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