Back Gipuzkoa is betting on a realistic and effective coexistence with AI in Industrysec2024 to remain competitive

2024 / 10 / 17
Lurraldeko zibersegurtasun arloko ekitaldirik handienaren laugarren edizioa eginda gaur, ZIURek antolatuta. Bertan, AAren desafioei eta mehatxuei buruz eta Europako araudi berriek dakartzaten erronkei buruz sakondu da.

Gipuzkoa is betting on a realistic and effective coexistence with AI in Industrysec2024 to remain competitive

The Aquarium is hosting the fourth edition of the largest cybersecurity event in the region, organised by ZIUR, which has delved into the challenges and threats of AI and the challenges posed by new European regulations.

The fourth edition of ‘IndustrySec’, the leading conference in the field of cybersecurity in Gipuzkoa, was held today at the Aquarium, which was sold out. This meeting organised by ZIUR, the Gipuzkoa Industrial Cybersecurity Centre belonging to the Provincial Council, has brought together more than 150 representatives of the sector who have come to learn about the vision of leading companies in cybersecurity and the local experience of different Gipuzkoan industrial companies in this field.

ZIUR, the major commitment of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa to strengthen the territory in industrial cybersecurity in the context of the digital transition, has managed to “generate a space for collaboration, innovation and shared knowledge at the service of companies and the cybersecurity sector itself”, said the general deputy, Eider Mendoza, at ‘IndustrySec2024’, who assured that the centre is “a benchmark and consolidated reality, which has woven a network made up of institutions, companies in the sector and companies interested or concerned about advancing the security of their systems, products and services”.

“Maintaining and strengthening the competitiveness of the industry is a vital challenge for Gipuzkoa, a challenge that Gipuzkoan companies face on various fronts. In the midst of a profound technological transformation that we are facing, even more so at the crossroads in which European industry finds itself, one of those fronts for competitiveness is, without a doubt, cybersecurity. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has only brought with it new threats and challenges, which our companies must be aware of and prepared for,” insisted the deputy general.

For her part, the director of ZIUR, María Penilla, has acted as presenter of this reference event and has interacted with her own avatar, built through AI. This striking staging has served to talk about the challenges and threats of AI for the industry. In this sense, she has pointed out that 60% of companies that are implementing AI have already suffered specific threats and by 2025 losses due to attacks driven by this technology are expected to amount to 5.3 million dollars worldwide, according to Gartner.

A “clear, realistic and effective” strategy in AI

“Gipuzkoa does not want to be left out of the AI ​​race, but we must have a clear, realistic, effective strategy aligned with our capabilities and our business strategy to guide investments well and not go bankrupt. We have to introduce the variable of ethics into the equation, in this Gipuzkoa must be a reference”, Penilla argued. The director of ZIUR explained the strategy of the centre, which in four years has offered workshops and regional and business sessions attended by around 1,000 people, has advised around 140 companies and has carried out 22 projects with 115 organisations.

After Penilla, Javier Fernández Tello, a cybersecurity specialist at Microsoft, gave a presentation, explaining why companies should adopt AI solutions and detailing Microsoft's AI strategy. Likewise, ‘IndustrySec2024’ has hosted the round table ‘How I evaluated and improved the level of cybersecurity in the design of my industrial product’, where four international manufacturers from Gipuzkoa in the machine tool sector —Fagor Automation, Ibarmia, Soraluce (Danobatgroup) and Loire Gestamp—, have presented their experience in the cybersecurity evaluation process based on the ZIUR methodology, within an initiative that is part of an alliance between the Gipuzkoa Industrial Cybersecurity Centre and AFM. In the coming months, ZIUR plans to repeat this experience in other key industrial sectors: the automotive, medical and IoT sectors.

Another of the major issues that has been put on the table at ‘IndustrySec2024’ has been the new European directive NIS2, which establishes a minimum level of cybersecurity for all Member States of the European Union and which affects medium and large companies, whether public or private, in critical and essential sectors. In recent months, such has been the multitude of queries received by ZIUR from the Guipuzcoan industry on this subject, that the centre decided to launch a virtual assistant based on AI to resolve all doubts on the matter. ‘IndustrySec2024’ has also resolved questions in relation to this regulation in a round table moderated by the head of industrial cybersecurity at SPRI, in which experts from Seinale, Leet Security and Biele Group have participated.

The Director General of Strategic Projects of the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, Koldo Peciña, has closed the benchmark event in the field of cybersecurity in Gipuzkoa by ensuring that “from the Provincial Council we will continue to help our industrial fabric to remain competitive” and has announced that in the coming months ZIUR will continue to tender projects focused on the evaluation of cybersecurity.