Press note:

Rome, April 18, 2023 – An awards ceremony was held today in Rome for the winners of Cyber X Mind4Future, the evolved, experiential training program on cybersecurity issues created by Leonardo, among the world’s top companies in Aerospace, Defense and Security, and CYBER 4.0, a National Center of Expertise on cybersecurity promoted by the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy.

Awarded the 10 students who excelled in the training program, who were awarded a Leonardo-funded scholarship. Started in December 2022, the course has seen the participation of about 500 students from the Center’s eight member universities (Sapienza, Tor Vergata, Roma Tre, LUISS Guido Carli, Campus Biomedico, Tuscia, Cassino and Lazio Meridionale, and L’Aquila). With a total of 15 hours of lectures, labs and four days of exercises on highly realistic simulated scenarios, the program alternated between classroom training and moments of true immersion in the cyber threat.

With Cyber X Mind4Future Leonardo and CYBER 4.0 are helping to meet the growing needs of the market by offering young university students an opportunity to acquire new skills and experiment with frontier technology solutions in an area, cybersecurity, in which the demand for jobs far exceeds the supply.

In fact, according to a report by the International Information System Security Certification Consortium (ISC)², by 2022, the skill-gap in cyber security was more than 3.4 million positions globally, while the World Economic Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2023 shows that only 46 percent of cyber leaders in companies believe their organization has the skills and people needed to deal with a cyber attack. Also according to WEF, for 64 percent of global cyber leaders, hiring and retaining talent is a key challenge in managing cyber resilience.

“2023 is the European Year of Competencies, and investing in hard and soft skills is essential to ensure cyber security, a key building block for a digital and technologically autonomous Italy and Europe at the forefront,” recalled Tommaso Profeta, managing director of Leonardo’s Cyber & Security Solutions Division. “As Leonardo we are committed, alongside institutions and academia, to developing the professional skills needed to meet this challenge, with our Cyber & Security Academy and initiatives such as Cyber X Mind4Future. Collaboration with the education system is confirmed as one of Leonardo’s main levers to attract the best talent and fuel continuous innovation.”

“CYBER 4.0 has training as one of the cornerstones of its mission,” said Leonardo Querzoni, president of the CYBER 4.0 Competence Center. “It is in this context that the Cyber X Mind4Future initiative was born, which immediately found the interest of the universities part of our center, and which CYBER 4.0 wanted to support with strength and conviction. The model of experiential education, adopted by Cyber X Mind4Future, represents from our point of view the most effective approach to create a link between the world of academic education and industrial reality, allowing students to assess firsthand what professional opportunities the near future holds for them.”

Among the topics covered in the course: cryptography, binary code analysis, security of computer systems and networks. To train hard and soft skills, an integral part of the training was also a “capture the flag” style “game”: answering a sequence of questions of increasing complexity along a virtual course that simulated the activities of analyzing and handling a real cyber security incident, students competed in a “cyber threat hunt” that allowed them to acquire technical skills and learn how to apply the correct behaviors to successfully deal with cyber attacks. The 72 students who excelled in the competition then moved on to the last phase of Cyber X Mind4Future: hands-on training on Leonardo’s Cyber Range platform. Used by cyber security experts in Italy and abroad to improve the ability to respond to cyber threats, the platform allowed students to measure themselves, both individually and in teams, in defense drills against simulated attacks launched by Leonardo’s ethical hackers on a fully realistic virtualized scenario. Specifically, a series of five cyber attacks toward a fictitious company, faithfully replicated thanks to the Cyber Range, was implemented that the students were called upon to protect. These included one in which Leonardo’s ethical hackers attempted to steal employee passwords (a so-called brute force attack) in order to exfiltrate company data, and a ransomware attack (among the most widespread and most lucrative malware for cyber criminals) aimed at demanding ransom in exchange for unlocking the compromised system.

The 10 Leonardo-funded scholarships were awarded to:

  • 5,000 euros for the first place winner, Edoardo Manenti (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”)
  • 3,000 euros for the runner-up, Matteo Capricci (University of L’Aquila)
  • 2,500 euros for the third place winner, Fabio Livorno (Sapienza University of Rome)
  • 2,000 euros for the fourth place winner, Andrea De Filippis (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”)
  • 1,500 euros for the fifth place winner, Giandomenico Casoli (Sapienza University of Rome)
  • 1,000 euros each for those ranked sixth to tenth: Christian Felicione (University of L’Aquila), Elisabetta Chiusoli (Sapienza University of Rome), Riccardo Luzi (Sapienza University of Rome), Luca Saverio Esposito (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”) and Davide Renzetti (Sapienza University of Rome).

Images and video: https://leonardo.canto.global/b/OP1CD

Leonardo, a global high-tech company, is among the world’s top companies in Aerospace, Defense and Security and the leading Italian industrial company. Organized into five business divisions, Leonardo has a significant industrial presence in Italy, the UK, Poland, and the U.S. where it also operates through subsidiaries such as Leonardo DRS (defense electronics) and a number of joint ventures and investments: ATR, MBDA, Telespazio, Thales Alenia Space and Avio. Leonardo competes in the most important international markets by leveraging its areas of technology and product leadership (Helicopters; Aircraft; Aerostructures; Electronics; Cyber & Security Solutions and Space). Listed on the Milan Stock Exchange (LDO), Leonardo reported consolidated revenues of 14.1 billion euros in 2021 and invested 1.8 billion euros in R&D. The company has been within the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) since 2010, confirming its position among the leading global companies in sustainability in 2021 as well. Leonardo is also included in the MIB ESG index.

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Cyber 4.0 is the National Highly Specialized Competence Center for Cybersecurity, one of 8 highly specialized competence centers funded by the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy (formerly the Ministry of Economic Development). Cyber 4.0 is a public-private partnership that includes 45 members, from the world of university and research, public institutions, the private world – large companies and specialized SMEs, associations and foundations. Cyber 4.0 carries out activities to strengthen the skills of companies and PAs, developing training initiatives, advisory and guidance programs, and promoting research and innovation projects.

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