“Cyber security is important for everyone, but for the financial world it is essential.” Tinexta’s CEO, Pier Andrea Chevallard, talks about one of the main challenges that technology companies are facing: making any operation or transaction “rigorously safe”, not just economic. The strategy is clear: security is no longer a side element of development, but it must be intrinsic to make growth possible.
How is Tinexta structured?
“It is a young company, born just over ten years ago, 56% controlled by Tecno Holding (the holding company of some Chambers of Commerce including Turin, Milan and Rome) and it is a company that over the years has grown on average to double digits both in terms of revenues and margins. Today it is active with four business units, one of which is in the process of being sold. The three on which he decided to focus are digital identity, the second is in services for innovation and marketing with a strong focus on digital and the latest line of business is cyber security. We want to build one of the national poles for cyber security, a complementary activity with digital identity to guarantee both digital security and the security of the interlocutor. We decided at the end of May to sell the credit division to Crif because we believe that we would not have been able to achieve a leadership position in that sector. Tinexta in 2021 achieved revenues of around 370 million and an Ebitda of around 98 million. Despite the extremely depressed moment that the stock market is experiencing, our value has grown 7 times since the listing and from 7 June we became part of Euronext Tech Leaders, the European Nasdaq, with a capitalization of around one billion ».
We are fighting physically in Ukraine but a parallel war is also being fought on the net. What is happening to businesses?
“During the first quarter of 2022 there were an extremely significant number of cyber attacks. They are now a stable component of the life of any company therefore the prevention and structuring of defense systems is increasingly necessary. It affects itself equally in all sectors. In the world of finance, attacks risk causing significant damage but no one is safe: the problems that a cyber attack can cause are very high in terms of not being able to operate for days. Dangers that do not concern only finance but any company and public administration. We carry out an attack simulation activity to understand what are the weaknesses of the companies’ systems and prepare the most suitable solutions to repel and apply the appropriate countermeasures with respect to ongoing attacks. In the first half of 2022, 75% of the attacks aimed at extortion concerned the manufacturing sector, so the problem is not limited to the financial world and also concerns the smallest companies “.
What is the difference between trusted and secure?
«The digital signature has a fundamental element which is the certainty of the identity of the interlocutor and the integrity of the document and therefore exponentially reduces the risk of being exposed to fraud. An electronically signed document could instead be signed by anyone ».
What changes will we experience in the world of fintech?
«We will get used to a different relationship with respect to the various functions: we will not necessarily still use the credit card and the ATM because payment systems are rapidly evolving. How the entire credit disbursement system is evolving quickly. This will involve very significant investments to guarantee safety ».
What is the weight of digitization in the North West economy?
«Our country on the subject of digitization has accumulated a fair delay because the investments were not immediately relevant as it would have been necessary. The public sector suffers an even greater delay because very often digitization has not been accompanied by a radical revision of the processes, therefore only the procedures have been computerized. In companies in the North West, on the other hand, the level of digitization is important. Given the small size of the companies, investments, especially in safety, have been more modest and the speed of innovation has not been so rapid, generating asymmetries between SMEs and large companies but in any case the growth has been important. It cannot be said that Piedmont, Liguria and Valle d’Aosta have fallen behind on this aspect, quite the contrary. These are regions that have a lively and active digital economy ».
What is the relationship between digital advancement and the development of the economic system and what does it mean in terms of costs and business support?
«Without digitization it is difficult to think that there is innovation, not only in manufacturing but also in services. There is a very close correlation, it is obvious that this means an increase in costs because the interventions necessary to update the production processes multiply. In our country, precisely to encourage this transformation, a very careful policy is needed to support innovation ».