ITALY Trends and Developments Contributed by: Giuseppe Fornari, Enrico Di Fiorino, Emanuele Angiuli and Lorena Morrone, Fornari e Associati
Overview The technological revolution that the world has experienced over the past 50 years has had a disruptive impact on all areas of society. It is not hard to imagine that these new technolo - gies are not necessarily always used for legiti - mate purposes. Indeed, it is an established fact that crimes are increasingly committed using IT tools. Cybernetic devices can very easily make an individual both the victim and perpetrator of an unlawful act, with a whole series of conse - quences in terms of prevention, detection and prosecution of crimes. Considering that the Italian Criminal Code was published in 1930, for instance, it is easy to understand how important it is for the legislature and the interpreters of the law to make a con - tinuous effort to keep legal matters up to date. The advent of cyberspace as a place of immedi - ate interaction, even between people thousands of kilometres away from each other, has made it necessary to question both what innovative types of crime could come to characterise crimi - nal law and which “classic” crimes can find new forms of commission through the use of the lat - est generation of technological means. The authors and users of criminal law are there - fore constantly called upon to adapt classic criminal schemes to modern reality or create new ones. This is a challenge, which it is impos - sible to fall behind on without leaving a more or less broad category of potentially unlawful con - duct uncovered. Today, more than ever, companies find them - selves engaged in the dual task of protecting themselves from the risk of cyber-attacks and preventing the commission of criminal offences made possible by the use of these tools. On the one hand, companies could see their internal
security undermined, while, on the other, they could face administrative liability arising from a crime (pursuant to Legislative Decree No 231/2001). Both scenarios could have serious impacts on business. It is worth considering that in 2024 the aver - age cost of a data breach reached an all-time high of USD4.88 million. This represents a 10% increase from the average cost of USD4.45 mil - lion in 2023. Taking a long-term view, the aver - age cost has increased by 15.3% between 2020 and 2023. In Italy, 30% of big companies esti - mate the financial damage from cyber threats is at least USD50,000 according to Rapporto Clusit 2024. Still, AI-provided security services allowed sig - nificant cost savings for organisations that relied on them for prevention (USD2.22 million saved with respect to organisations which did not use them). This shows that the use of AI and automa - tion is becoming a fundamental asset to tackle data breaches (Cost of a Data Breach Report, 2023 and 2024, IBM, which recognises that “adopting security AI and automation can cut breach costs” ). However, the rise of AI-backed solutions has not yet slowed down the number of cyber-incidents, which in 2024 increased by 27.4% compared to the previous year. However, the trend has its roots further back than that. In 2020, 81% of companies said that “staying ahead of attackers is a constant battle and the cost is unsustain- able” (State of Cybersecurity Resilience 2021,
Accenture). Cybercrime
When talking about cybercrimes, a distinction should be made. Cybercrimes in the strict sense are characterised, in terms of the specificity of
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