The defence technology against cyber attacks on industrial systems that are multiplying in Italy and around the world is from Bologna. Thus, a team that was born in the university starts from the solutions of the Internet of Things to make the technological life of the production systems of companies safer. Giampaolo Colletti interviews Aldo Campi, CEO of Stoorm5, and Maurizio Lenzi, Angel partner and Business & Alliance managing director for FARE INSIEME
by Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero
Today
contemporary wars are also fought in digital terrains, inhabited by viruses and
malware. And they are the goodguys,
technologically opposed to the badguys.
This is how Stoorm5 takes shape, a Bolognese IT company committed to providing
products and services related to Industry 4.0. The technological heart of this
hi-tech enterprise is led by a team of Emilian academics. Because everything
starts from university researchers and today the team has about ten
collaborators. The innovative start-up was born in Bologna in that area of
telecommunications engineering and information technology, which today is
increasingly taking sides in defence of the network. In 2017 Maurizio Lenzi
joined as a business angel, expression of a significant path in the
entrepreneurial and industrial history of the Emilia-Romagna region. We are
certainly talking about technology, we are talking about Software Defined Networking, and an invention patent that brings
computer security where there is fat and noise, but where the money is made,
i.e. in the production departments of companies. But in practice it soon
becomes clear that the survival of the companies that produce is at stake
thanks also to the adoption of advanced technologies. And therefore they are
exposed to risks.
The strength of the IoT. But there
is one element that distinguishes this company, dedicated and therefore
exclusively linked to theInternet of Things; Stoorm5 develops thanks to its IoT platform, which allows to enormously
reduce costs and time for the digitisation of production systems, both modern
and obsolete or dated. Various applications have already been created on the
basis of the Stoorm5 platform: ranging from the monitoring of production
systems, to that of devices in hospitals and the management of alarm and
critical mission systems. «We immediately understood the revolutionary impact
of the Internet of Things: technology was starting to appear on the market
promising to put objects with different architectures in communication. We saw
all of this arrive on the horizon from a privileged position linked to
research», says Aldo Campi, CEO of Stoorm5. In addition to the IoT platform,
Stoorm5 once again wanted to be ahead of the times by creating a factory
security system made in Bologna, but already marketed at a European level:
thus, Edge SDN was born, a telecommunications network that secures the entire
production system of the company. «With an approach to security based on the
telecommunications network, which is reflected in a patent granted at a
European level, it is possible to defend factory systems by measuring the level
of security achieved and by certifying its maintenance. It is possible to
secure any network, even with 5G connectivity, everything works with the
existing infrastructure without the need to make expensive investments»,
specifies Campi.
The big picture. An overall, pervasive and predictive security. A digital security that
goes beyond the simple defence of the network, but embraces the machines and
production equipment of a company. And this is the innovation that makes the
difference. «Business continuity is often taken for granted because excellent
levels of the components that make up the production machinery have been
achieved, ignoring that a cyber attack in an area of the factory is enough to
block production for days and have to pay an important ransom for the return to
normal. There was an absentee in the industrial plants, namely computer
security. Stoorm5's proposals are used to help digitise and protect the
production systems of large and small, local and international production
companies», says Maurizio Lenzi, Angel partner and managing director of
Business & Alliance. But there is more. The company's expansion plans aim in the future at creating a network of
distributors for a product that has an Italian heart, made in Bologna.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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