Andrea Carcano, from his attic in Varese to San Francisco with a leader enterprise in the informatic security field

We met the entrepreneur from Varese who has founded Nozomi Networks. Nowadays, the company have more than 350 employers and branches all over the world

“When the military attack in Ukraine hadn’t started yet, we saw so many out-of-scale attacks from one of our important costumers that we thought there was a mistake in our product. But it was not.” These are the words of Andrea Carcano, a young entrepreneur from Varese who founded Nozomi Networks several years ago, a successful company in the Cybersecurity field born in 2013 in his parents’ attic in Varese and, nowadays, with more than 350 employers and branches all over the world.

We met Andrea Carcano in San Francisco, during the Techmission trip organized by Confindustria Varese. The Innov.It center, opened about a year ago at the request of the Italian Consulate as a boost for sturtups and small and medium-sized Italian enterprises in Silicon Valley, was the appointment’s venue. So, Carcano told his story born on the desks of the Insubria University, where his Professor was Marco Astuti himself, who is the actual coordinator of the Techmission trip.

“It’s a pleasure to share my story,” Carcano told the Techmission group. “I’m the founder of Nozomi Network, a company with 350 people that has grown very quickly, so much so that only last year we had 190 engineers. We’ve grown by 70% in one year, and we’re the example of a company that first raised money in Europe, then continued here in the United States, but kept most of its development in Italy. I graduated from Insubria University in Varese thanks to my passion for technology and cybersecurity. There is a lot of research inside our algorithms. Then, after some experiences, I left the university world and worked for three years in Eni, studying what a cyber attack could cause to some delicate structures.”

“The idea of developing artificial intelligence in cybersecurity came from there. With my partner, we started by founding the company in my parents’ attic, convinced that we would find someone willing to invest, but it wasn’t easy. We developed the prototype of a small and revolutionary infrastructure that would allow us to prevent or report targeted cyber attacks; the first difficulty was that we presented a product that was difficult to get tested. Then, thanks to an initial investor who believed in us as people more than in the product, we found our first customer, Enel. We did a first test that went very well, bringing home a first small contract, and nowadays, we protect 150 Enel power-producing situations around the world.”

Over time, other important customers arrived. “Thanks to Enel’s references, we were able to introduce ourselves to other major companies we cannot mention. Then, we developed a new technology, and the situation has completely changed with the conflict in Ukraine. In 2021, when the military attack hadn’t started yeat, we saw so many out-of-scale attacks from one of our entrepreneur customers in Ukraine that we thought there was a mistake in our product. We set up a task force because the attack that our protection systems were suffering was huge. We worked with local authorities, and now those attacks have been useful to develop new protection systems even for other companies. When the war broke out, we have cyclically experienced how every Russian attack is also followed by an attack against the IT infrastuctures. We don’t do investigative works, but we collaborate with the authorities to provide what is needed to the investigations themselves.”

“It’s sad to say that, but after the war, investments in our field have considerably changed in many parts of the world,” Andrea Carcano concluded. “Then, we also made specific choices. For instance, in Poland we provided our system for free for a year because they couldn’t pay. However, there are many realities in that situation. As far as companies are concerned, I always say that 100% safety doesn’t exist, we must be clear. The cybersecurity topic is like the dentist: if you do prevention, you can limit the damage; if you do nothing, the damage may be enormous when you suffer an attack. The topic of cyber security is never over: we still have a lot to do.”

                                                                                                        Translated by Ponzo Annalisa, Enea Molinari, Arigannou Ihssan

Revised by N. Dall’Osto