The general director of Vodafone Empresas, Jesús Suso, has insisted that Europe must move towards greater concentration of its operators to bring forth "powerful" and "truly relevant" companies. At the same time, he has warned that, with artificial intelligence (AI), it is "relatively cheap, practically free, to be able to attack," while the necessary spending to protect oneself "has not dropped to that same level."
In this line, the head of Vodafone Empresas has emphasized that it is key for companies to have clear response protocols and place resilience at the center of their strategy, considering that "what is most important is to recover" because attacks are going to occur "constantly," as he stated during his participation in the "Foro CREO" organized by "Cinco Días."
"Technology allows us to act, but the main problem is the awareness of people, as the previous speaker said, and the awareness of companies to be able to work on that resilience with productivity," he added, appealing for a cultural change within organizations.
Digital sovereignty and data management in Spain
On another note, Suso has focused on security and digital sovereignty in the Spanish business fabric, stressing that organizations collaborating with companies "should be very sensitive to how they connect their different bodies."
To reinforce that framework, he has argued that "Spanish digital sovereignty must promote the creation of companies that have 'data centers' in Spain, that are operated in Spain" with the aim of having the appropriate practices to achieve "the maximum possible resilience."
The executive has also described networks as "the heart of the digital economy" and recalled that data traffic has skyrocketed in recent years.
"If we look, for example, in the last five years energy consumption has grown by 2%, 3%, approximately in five years; however, the consumption of gigabytes, which would be a form of mobile gigabytes, has multiplied by 4 or 5," he detailed, emphasizing that "it is essential to have very clear control of the networks" and of "where the networks, the data are."
Growing risks in connected infrastructures
Finally, Suso has pointed out that the attack surface against cybersecurity incidents has skyrocketed due to the dispersion of workforces and the expansion of the Internet of Things.
"Today the company has changed the scope: before the company was in the offices and today the company is anywhere in the world," he indicated, warning that "absolutely everything is susceptible to being connected."
As an example of the consequences of a late reaction, he recalled the cyberattack suffered by some supermarkets in France, where cybercriminals acted "on the refrigerators that were connected through the network" and it took "more than a day to realize that they had been hacked," reaching temperatures "on the order of 50 degrees."
In conclusion, he emphasized that "the function of the network is very critical" and that it is "much more complex to act than to defend oneself."