Elettronica SpA, have seventy years of successes, research and pioneering innovation with military platforms for 30 governments all over the world, helping the military to get back home safely.
In the presence of the most distinguished representatives from the sector, in the charming setting of the Scenery Laboratory of the Opera House of Rome, the 70th anniversary of the company was celebrated with an event devoted to the vision of the future, as the leader in its field with 70 years of industrial history and expertise.
Established on the intuition of its founding father Filippo Fratalocchi and developed according to the visionary strategies of his grandson Enzo Benigni, Elettronica Spa has led the history of the sector of electronic defence, with a constant commitment in research and innovation.
Starting from a laboratory at the Tiburtina district of Rome with 25 employees, it presently employs over 1000 staff with five offices worldwide, from Asia to the Middle East, and two Subsidiary Companies, the German Elt GmbH specializing in Homeland Security and Cy4Gate, an Italian company with excellence in cyber intelligence and cyber security, listed in 2020 at AIM with the most important IPO of the last three years.
The company led by Enzo Benigni, Chairman & CEO, and Domitilla Benigni, also CEO and COO, and Lorenzo Benigni, Senior Vice President Governmental & Institutional Relations, have supplied over 3000 strategic surveillance, self-protection, electronic defence and operational support systems for air, naval and land applications.
The event represented an important occasion to think about the 'great future' and the responsibilities in the defence and security sector. An initiative to consider the new technological frontiers, cybersecurity, drones, big data, that intertwine with the unforeseeable and changing geopolitical dynamics.
The event was attended by well-known representatives from international organizations, European and Italian institutions: Giancarlo Giorgetti, Minister for Economic Development, Lorenzo Guerini, Minister of Defense, Claudio Graziano, President of the EU Military Committee, David H. Petraeus, Partner of KKR and President of KKR Global Institute, Roberto Baldoni, Director of the Italian Cybersecurity Agency, Gianni Letta, former Undersecretary to the Prime Miniser’s Office, Franco Bernabè, Chairman of Acciaierie Italia Spa. Kevin Ashton, expert in technology and digital Transformation and Dav Moran, expert in technology and inventor of the USB pen drive.
Video messages were also sent by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Luigi di Maio, and the French Minister for the Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire.
In the current climate, where technology impacts on geopolitics, Europe needs to reaffirm its role by finding a new strategic position, redefining the global alliances and asserting its own technological sovereignty.
The Chairman Enzo Benigni said “The sector of Defense is about to face a huge change from a social, geopolitical and technological point of view, that will change the old rules; an epoch-making turning point, a great future. The concurrence of political stability, the lively debate on the European Defense and the new financial resources introduced by the Italian PNRR have laid the bases for an ideal condition to face and govern this great change. We feel that our company is the protagonist of this moment in consideration of its distinctive skills and for showing the existence of a European Defense both in its shareholding and through the participation in the main European Defense Programs.”
Recent events, including the cyber-attack to the US pipeline in Texas, already showed how digitalization is offsetting – or better – increasingly mixing the concepts of traditional Defense and Security, and ho IT codes represent both the danger and the weapons we have at our disposal to defend our future and future generations.
The world in which we live, and that includes the new scenario of the Defense, is a network full of connected smart devices. The connective tissue of this network is the electromagnetic spectrum, where Elettronica have been studying and innovating for the last 70 years.
“There are no more borders between defence and security; digitalization made our daily lives easier but also more fragile,” stated Domitilla Benigni, “The conflicts we need to be ready to face are silent and invisible, as it is invisible the electromagnetic spectrum. We see this clearly in the so-called “super systems. The interconnected platforms of the future that work on the electromagnetic spectrum, and we from Elettronica have been focusing our attention for 70 years on the dominance of this environment. This excellence, together with the cyber skills, give our company vision and fundamental abilities in the sector of Defense and Security that we have in front of us. An important challenge that requires to focus on new technological sovereignties and on a stronger and stronger public-private collaboration."
As underlined by Lorenzo Benigni, SVP in charge of Institutional Relations: “We have built our company history thanks to the extraordinary support of the Armed Forces and institutions, unavoidable interlocutors and fundamental actors in the dialogue with the Governments of the different Countries of the world that we have dealt with. This was one of the factors of success of the last 70 years, and it will continue to be so especially if we look at the main European Defense programs. The initiative was most of all the occasion to gather reliable interpretations on the dynamics that we have in front of us."
David H. Petraeus, President of KKR Global Institute underlined: “We are faced with a new cold war with old and new actors. In a grey zone war where not hearing the engines of ships and tracked vehicles, but the devious silence of cyberwarfare and information warfare,” stated Claudio Graziano, President of the European Union Military Committee.
Roberto Baldoni, Director General of the national cybersecurity agency stated: “Security is not something that your conquest and that remains unchanged forever; it must be continuously fuelled, because attackers always use new methodologies. If we were to measure the level of exposure to cyber risk in a scale from 0 to 10, I would say we are at level 8. The true enemy that we need to defeat in this case is the low degree of awareness, and to do so we have to invest in training, by increasing the number of young engineers and experts that will be able to defend us from cyber-attacks, by paying particular attention to the number of women involved. We need to raise the bar of resilience to cyber-attacks in our Country, by also using the investments of the PNRR in the implementation of a new digital industrial policy that, among its priorities, shall develop a national and European technology also to improve the de-risking of the critical infrastructures of our Country.”