What is phishing?
It is a type of computer scam aimed at extorting personal information from the victim in order to steal access to his payment or home banking profiles, pretending to be the provider of such services via email or sms. The phenomenon has grown considerably during the pandemic, also due to the need to use a greater amount of telematic services in an increasing number of people with basic or poor computer knowledge. A survey by Avira, a German company producing antivirus software, has shown that more than 60% of employers have not taken measures to ensure cyber security in smart working and that although 50% of Italians are worried about theft and fraud only a quarter of them would buy digital security software. In addition, 95% of a sample of IT professionals worldwide said that they faced additional IT security problems due to the spread of Covid-19 and smart working.
Ermes has taken care of a census of the main IT frauds that are carried by the web (source: The Italians sail without protection, Il Manifesto, 28/10/2020):
- identity theft: it is carried out starting from information about employees and their devices tracked and stored on systems outside the company, putting at risk professional privacy and corporate security;
- keylogging: sites can "record" any action performed on the pages visited, such as clicks and keystrokes. The data collected also contains credentials and credit card numbers;
- tabnabbing: stealing access credentials through false tabs or web windows similar to those of the most common sites such as Facebook and Gmail where the user enters without knowing it username and password;
- fraudulent data collection- following the normal browsing of employees, web histories, click tracing, contacts and credentials provided in the forms can be stolen and used for malicious purposes;
- digital espionage: profiles created by tracer elements on the page can be given to competitors or used to block production lines;
- cryptojacking: sites embed scripts that leverage the computing power of our devices to extract cryptocurrency by slowing down device performance by up to 95%.
Ermes gets to Spain
Born in 2018 ini3P incubator of the Politecnico di Torino, Ermes can boast a fast, scalable and effective cybersecurity system in 97% of cyber attacks thanks to the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data. This solution has already supported big realities such as Unione Industriale di Torino, Carrefour, Enel, Lavazza and Reale Mutua.
The second branch of Ermes will be part of Barcelona Tech City, the tech hub of the homonymous city where institutions, research institutions, startups and companies meet. Spain, according to Ermes' management, is a market similar to the Italian one, with similar issues but also with an economy, in this phase, that is more dynamic and interconnected with the American continent.
For this reason there is not only Spain among the objectives of the Turin startup but the whole Iberian peninsula: in fact, in parallel, a collaboration with the MIT Portugal Entrepreneurship Initiative 's BGI has started, which opens the way also on the other side of the Atlantic, thanks to the connections with the MIT of Boston.
And Italy?
Ermes is not escaping, but rather it is consolidating and expanding its presence in Turin. This is confirmed by the activation of new resources in the renovated and enlarged Turin office during the first lockdown, given the great increase in requests for services in the light of the data illustrated above, but above all the words of CEO Metwalley: "Contrary to what is thought, Italy, Turin in particular, is an ideal place to innovate and we will continue to invest resources in our country, also by expanding our offer to small and medium enterprises. On the other hand, the numbers prove us right and also the interest of a consulting multinational like Gartner, with whom we have recently formed a partnership".
