The incident involving CrowdStrike systems has tested the resilience and response capacity of the companies involved, which have found themselves facing a shutdown, exorbitant economic costs and damage to their image. Fear, then, at least until the company’s clarification, has prevailed among all experts in the sector and beyond. “In today’s highly interconnected and digitalized world – says Andrea Provini, president of Aused (Association of Users of Information Systems and Technologies) – networking plays a crucial role in solving problems, especially in the field of cybersecurity. Recently, fear has prevailed among all of us who work in this sector. However, the immediate comparison allowed us to understand that it was not a cyber attack, but above all to collaborate to identify the immediate actions to take to guarantee business continuity, protect our data, our privacy and everything that ‘flows’ in a company’s network, regardless of its size or turnover”.
Networking, therefore, as a tool of resilience to deal with painful and non-painful actions that can have an immediate impact on the lives of millions of citizens across the globe with consequent unimaginable damage. What is needed is a reactive response, coordinated also between public and private to guarantee the security of computer networks at all levels. Responses must be immediate and univocal. Knowledge and know-how in this area must be shared because threats do not make distinctions.
But how can we defend ourselves from similar incidents? “To prevent these situations – explains Provini – there is no specific solution: certainly developing a diversification strategy (Cloud/on premise, diversification of suppliers and technologies, strengthening of business continuity technologies) is viable, even if it poses a problem of increased costs (about 25%) that companies cannot always bear, in addition to the need for internal strengthening of resources to not depend on the outside in critical situations such as the one just passed. A good associative network, actively participated, can help make this scenario more sustainable and make the difference”.
