Luca Calindri | Country Sales Manager, Italy and Malta
Italy is increasingly adopting cloud computing technologies and platforms to accelerate the country’s digital transformation. The move affects both state agencies and small to medium enterprises (SMEs) that form the backbone of the Italian economy. Thales Italy has recently joined the CSA Italian chapter, part of the non-profit CSA US organization, to enable Italian organizations to move faster and safer into cloud adoption.
Italy’s cloud adoption is growing
The 2020 edition of the Digital Economy and Society Index published by the European Commission, and based on 2019 data, saw Italy almost at the bottom of the most digitized member states in EU. Only Romania, Greece, and Bulgaria fared worse. Some recent developments, however, are likely to improve the score of at least one indicator: digital public services. The government plans to make all services provided by central and the local institutions digitally available to citizens, which would represent a huge step towards the digital transformation of the Italian public administration.
At the same time, Italy aims to create a storage system for sensitive state data using cloud technology. “We have decided to create a national cloud hub for state data, whose residency will be in Italy and in Europe, but we will use the best technologies available at international level,” said Vittorio Colao, Italy’s innovation minister. Because of the government support for promoting cloud adoption, the country is projected to grow significantly in the European cloud computing market with over 15% CAGR between 2021 and 2028.
The growth is attributed to the increasing adoption of cloud computing solutions and services by SMEs and other business verticals, which is supported by the investments of multinational tech companies. For instance, in May 2020, Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in Italian cloud computing services.
Challenges to cloud adoption
Cloud adoption is not an easy journey. Public and private organizations are facing many challenges and barriers that are holding them back. Thales customers in Italy are reporting that they are struggling with cloud adoption, and they are confused by the advice they get from the various cloud providers. This is not unique to Italy.
The recent 2021 Cloud Security Report indicates that among the barriers to cloud adoption, organizations mention a lack of qualified staff (39%) as the biggest impediment to faster adoption, followed by data security issues (34%) and legal & regulatory compliance (32%).
Italian organizations are concerned about overcoming the complexity of robust and effective cloud security as they need to establish controls that will allow them to:
- Be compliant with GDPR security and privacy requirements.
- Be compliant with post-Schrems II landscape and the new Standard Contractual Clauses (SCC).
- Manage effectively and securely the cryptographic keys required for protecting data at rest and in transit.
- Adapt to the evolving EU strategies and policies for the EU Digital Market.
To overcome these challenges and barriers, Italian businesses are seeking advice from the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Italian Chapter. CSA defines the strategy for digital transformation in public and private sector by providing best practices, concepts, schemes and consultancy to organizations migrating to the cloud. The expertise and experience of CSA is crucial in setting the agenda, to provide best practices and cyber hygiene guidance to demonstrate how cloud adoption and cloud security posture should work.
The value proposition of the joint CSA – Thales collaboration
Thales Italy is collaborating and aligning its cloud security practices with CSA Italian Chapter to enable Italian organizations to move faster and safer into cloud adoption and secure a successful digital transformation. The two organizations will be communicating a consistent message of cloud security hygiene, with CSA providing the 'theory' and Thales the 'practice' of implementing solutions and integrating with all popular providers, like Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud.
The goal and the value proposition of the joint Thales – CSA collaboration include:
- Promote the message of security by design
- Provide clear guidance on data security and protection
- Educate on the shared security responsibility model
- Minimize mistakes with the cloud service providers
The benefit to organizations of working with Thales is that they will get a consistent and single perspective on the cloud journey to securely control any cloud initiative. Visit CSA, Italy Chapter to learn more about their work.