Cybersecurity, a new research foundation in Italy

Of the 116 million available (of which 48 to be invested in the South), 91.3 will go to basic research and 9.4 to industrial research, while 2.4 million will be used for development, 11.2 for aid to innovation poles and 1 .8 to training. The foundation includes eleven universities (from Ca’ Foscari to Cagliari), seven research centres, including the Sant’Anna High School of Pisa and the Bruno Kessler Foundation, and six companies: in addition to Leonardo, Eni, Fincantieri, Intesa Sanpaolo , Deloitte and Telsy, Tim’s cybersecurity arm. “We have the opportunity to build critical mass on these issues – says Loia -. We have brought together 350 experts and we aim to double and we must do 130 recruitment of researchers”, of which 40% in the South. Another strong constraint is the 40% of female researchers involved in the projects.

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Matter of bureaucracy

But why the choice of the foundation for cybersecurity? “It was the ministry that imposed this mechanism and asked that they be new entities”. explains Prinetto. “We had recommended not to do it – urges Nicola Blefari Melazzi, director of the national inter-university consortium for telecommunications (Cnit) and professor at the Roman University of Tor Vergata, head of the Restart telecommunications project -, but to copy the structure of European projects, in which the money is entrusted to the coordinator who then distributes it among the participants. Here the ministry has requested new legal entities“. On the one hand there are the spokes, in variable numbers depending on the partnership, who collect the funding and distribute it among the participants, while the hub performs coordination functions.

Result? To access the funds of the Pnrr, the universities had to open a foundation. “In this way we have lost at least 4-5 months”, complains Blefari Melazzi. At his Restart, which will deal with the future of 5G, radars, sensors, the internet of things, I have been at work since August. “We had to create a board of directors, open a current account and now we are waiting for a green light from the prefecture“, He says. The goal is to start the engines in January 2023.

It is a complex system, if you add to the fact that universities and research institutions are part of various alliances. The Cnit, for example, is also in Serics. Or just think that the only university of Catania, as he writes on his siteis part of eight of the 14 partnerships: from quantum to Fair, the program on artificial intelligence, and from environmental sustainability to telecommunications. So Bologna, which is at the helm of the Grins project (on the economic and financial sustainability of the territories), is also inside Nest, on green energy, led by the Bari Polytechnic.

“Collaboration between partnerships is essential – says Blefari Melazzi -. Those on artificial intelligence and quantum computing are linked to Restart, just as we are interested in working with the one on medicine. Now we have the ball, we have to commit ourselves to doing a good job”. For Loia,”faced with such complex systems it was not easy for the ministry to find a solution. Our hope is that the administrative aspect is linked to a fluidity of funds”.

Funds for cybersecurity

In the last draft of the manoeuvre, the government has inserted two new funds for the national strategy of cybersecurity. The first covers investments aimed at technological autonomy and raising IT security levels, with a redistribution that envisages 70 million in 2023, 90 in 2024, 110 for 2025 and 150 from 2025 to 2037. The second fund finances cybersecurity management and set it up 10 million in 2023, 50 in 2024 and 70 starting in 2025.