ICCC Opening speech

The multi-faceted crisis of the last two years represents a stress test for the current organization of society, furthermore, the health crisis has had an impact on economic, social, phycological, human aspects and more, modifying the lifestyle, altering behavioural patterns, perceptions, restricting, directly or indirectly, human rights and freedom, generating a sense of insecurity and setting up a sense of real and present danger, amplifying a sense of loneliness in seniors. Resilience is one of the keywords, “improving resilience” is the general effort in many sectors from education to healthcare including general critical infrastructures. At the same time another keyword is “to secure economy” finding the golden balance between citizens health and economy, let’s say “as open as possible, as closed as much necessary”. Since the beginning of the pandemic cyber technology was immediately considered the silver-bullet to contribute to mitigate the drawbacks, so during lockdowns e-services mainly devoted to merchandise and food delivery enjoyed an incredible success and several new spinoffs were activated. This completely unusual situation, lockdowns, reduced opportunity to travel, need to find new solutions to perform usual tasks stimulated creativity and brain as it happens in case of crisis // so step by step different sectors discovered a new horizon. Public administration services suffered a significant crisis because both the switch to smart work and the digitisation of procedures were critical tasks, // museums and cultural institution “invented” guided virtual tours, curators' lectures, virtual round tables. // Schools at different levels switched to distant learning using different platforms, students from primary schools to universities had to adapt to this virtual learning environment created on the fly. The acceleration in digital transition boosted by the pandemic together with the discontinuity triggered by information technology and its pervasiveness have created the basis for a completely new scenario in which the harmful use of digital technologies is becoming a new business opportunity // not only as a direct mean to steal "assets" or taking full control of intelligent objects. // The ‘foul’ use of AI and ML by hackers can “weaponise” these advanced technologies, in addition the format of "cyber-crime as a service" is blooming, terrorists have found in cyber-technology the best way both to manage their business and to recruit new "followers".