LEONARDO & CUBBIT: THE FIRST ULTRA-SECURE CLOUD IS BORN

To develop its technologies and safeguard its capabilities, Leonardo manages about 20 million billion pieces of data. Protecting this data is a matter of strategic importance for Italy as a whole.

To address this issue in an innovative way, Leonardo, together with Cubbit, is implementing a new cloud architecture capable of ensuring both maximum security and maximum usability of the data. The concept was to devise a system capable of "fragmenting" the data over multiple points in the system (nodes of the cloud network). The fragmented data is stored in many fragments so that, in the event of an attack (e.g., malware), the individual fragment becomes the first sensor of an ongoing attack. Once the attack is detected, the node is isolated, the data fragment is deleted, and the rest of the network goes into a defensive mode, increasing its counter-offensive potential by leveraging its intrinsic supercomputing capability, thus raising a barrier that is impregnable.

Leonardo will be the first company in the AD&S (Aerospace, Defense & Security) sector to use the geo-distributed cloud technology developed by Cubbit. In this solution, data is not stored in a few centralized data centres — as is the case with traditional cloud storage. Instead, each file is encrypted, fragmented, and replicated across multiple geographic locations and can always be reconstructed in its entirety. Security is therefore ensured even in situations where one or more geographic locations may be affected, such as in the case of physical and cyber attacks or in the face of natural disasters. Thanks to the granular geographic distribution of the data, digital sovereignty is also guaranteed, as each file can be distributed within a single country or region.

The agreement provides that Leonardo's sites in Genoa and Chieti will be the first to be involved in the development of the partnership. Leonardo will create a distributed data lake synergistic with the central one to validate protocols that significantly reduce the need to move data from the centre to the edge and vice versa. This will incorporate directly into the data itself features for resiliency (disaster recovery) and low latency access (EDGE computing). The goal is to increase support for the digital development of the Leonardo Group's business, such as in the construction of digital twins of flagship products. There will be significant improvements in terms of sustainability: the reduction of data traffic allows for a decrease in CO2 production and emissions. Geo-distributed storage also enables the construction of more efficient digital twins, which consolidate in the central archives only the strictly necessary data, without losing the ability to analyze all of the data at the edge. In the second phase of the project, the collaboration will extend in the context of research and development, exploring some next-generation projects, such as data transfer between satellites.