Murtra: “If we are going into an era of areas of influence, Europe had better start building cybersecurity”

The Chairman of Telefónica, Marc Murtra, today stressed at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he participated in a panel entitled ‘Cyber defenders in the age of AI’, the need for Europe to develop its own technology to strengthen strategic sovereignty. “If you don’t have technology, if you don’t have capacity, if you don’t have deep know-how, it is a big problem. If we want to have autonomy, and if we are going into an era of areas of influence, Europe must start building cybersecurity,” he said.

Murtra said that security is “an integral challenge”, which in the case of Telefónica involves meeting the needs of the 350 million customers the company has in all the countries in which it operates. “What we telecom operators do is integrate third-party products and manage the security of our customers,” he said.

The chairman of Telefónica acknowledged that Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers more possibilities to cybercriminals, but that it also offers more resources and options to those who are responsible for planning a preventive defence and offering security. “Every vulnerability makes the system stronger,” he explained.

Based on this premise, and although he clarified that “in terms of security it is always dangerous to make predictions”, he was optimistic about the future of security. “If we look five or ten years ahead, I would say things are going to be safer,” he emphasized. 

The panel in which the chairman of Telefónica took part was moderated by James Harding, editor-in-chief of ‘The Observer’, and also featured Jessica Rosenworcel, Executive Director, MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Nadav Zafrir, Chief Executive Officer, Check Point Software Technologies; and Jill Popelka, Chief Executive Officer, Darktrace.