| Poste Italiane Aims for Security |
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When providing postal, banking, financial and now also telephone services, ICT security is essential. This is what Gerardo Costabile, responsible of the Logical Security unit of Security & Safety in Poste Italiane, tells us.
Today Poste Italiane is a dynamic reality that bears comparison with analogous postal services around Europe. ICT and important advances in security services have enabled important steps forward, especially with respect to the increasing demand of online services. "We want to bring all the services of Poste Italiane on mobile telephones", says Gerardo Costabile "giving, for example, access to financial services. We can manage the entire internal process, thus guaranteeing a high level of intrinsic security." The Security and Safety department ensures the protection of the whole material and immaterial assets thanks to an efficient global security system, that guarantees adequate security levels (physical security, logical security and safety) in different application areas. The Logical Security unit is responsible for the information security governance: corporate policy, standards and guidelines. "All national and international security policy rulesmust be applied in our complex organisation", explains Costabile. "To do so, it is necessary to share guidelines and receive contributions from different sectors of the company. The main difficulty is to model and integrate security policies in corporate business and organizational decisions. The dialog between the various sectors is therefore fundamental in order to define efficient and effective security procedures. In Poste Italiane we have about 100.000 computerised users and soon also postmen will have a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) that will let them carry out many operations without returning to their offices. Everybody must adhere to the security rules."  The choice of institutional and technical partners is fundamental. The Postal Police is historically a Police department of the Ministry of Interior who has always protected postal and communication services. The relationship with Poste Italiane is very close and the fight against computer crime, i.e. phishing, a top priority. The Security & Safety department of Poste Italiane has coordinated an international team which defines and constantly updates the anti-phishing policies.
These innovation efforts cannot be conducted without the support of technical partners of excellence such as CEFRIEL. "Security needs a trusty relationship and loyal and competent people", concludes Costabile. "In the past security was seen as something static to be applied only after an incident. This concept has been turned around and now we talk about business and proactive security. Also reaction times are important: our partners must be excellent and always ready to help us foresee the risks in constantly changing scenarios".
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