Nunzia Ciardi, a native of Naples who moved to Rome years ago, a law graduate and head of the Postal and Telecommunications Police, has been appointed by the Council of Ministers as deputy director of the National Cybersecurity Agency.
She is a member of Europol’s European Union Cybercrime Taskforce and of the European EU-OF2CEN Project for the adoption of common strategies against organised crime in the field of online fraud.
In her role she will work alongside the Director, Roberto Baldoni, full professor of Engineering at La Sapienza University and, from 2017 until last August, deputy director at the Dis (Department of Information for Security).
The Baldoni-Ciardi tandem, two of the leading Cyber experts in Italy, faces a huge and extremely tough challenge: putting the Italian system in reliable conditions of security and defence against a devastating and unstoppable threat.
The author of books and scientific publications on cybercrime, she contributed to drafting the Clusit Report 2018, 2019 and 2020.
She deserves credit for having been ahead of her time and for having taken a far-sighted approach in running the Police office she headed.
In addition, in inter-institutional relations and in dealings with private bodies, she skilfully conveyed a modern image of the Postal Police in its role serving citizens against Cybercrime.
The challenge of the Cyber Agency
In Largo Santa Susanna, in the former headquarters of the Dis, in Piazza Dante, the Cybersecurity Agency is taking its first steps.
Meetings are continuous, and a structure with a series of enormous strategic objectives and responsibilities has to be built almost from scratch and got up and running as soon as possible.
Ciardi brings her wealth of experience and expertise, already shared on several occasions over the years with the leaders of the security and defence sector.
The tandem with Baldoni will serve to bring guidelines and priorities into focus, especially in this urgent start-up phase.
A progressive plan, wanted by Gabrielli, now the authority delegated for National Security, and shared by Prime Minister Mario Draghi.
Every day, Ciardi divides her time between commanding around 2,000 people, twenty regional departments and 80 provincial sections, and the need to explain, in public and in every institutional forum, the ferocity of cybercrime, child pornography, blackmail against Businesses, threats to Critical Infrastructures, data and identity theft, Revenge Porn and, most recently, the possibility of subversive actions by No Vax activists on the Telegram channel.
An impressive catalogue, now updated every day.
