Two of the five cybersecurity leaders below spent decades in Italian law enforcement before moving into corporate security, one as a lieutenant colonel in the Carabinieri and the other investigating cybercrime for the State Police. A third wrote his first paper on artificial intelligence in 1988 and co-founded an industrial control systems startup before most companies had a security function. The other two came up through security engineering, one in San Marino and the other in the SOC of Italy’s electricity grid operator. Together they protect an energy group, an insurer, a bank, a gas transmission company, and the national telecom operator, much of it infrastructure the whole country depends on.
Yuri Rassega – Group CISO, Enel Group
Yuri Rassega wrote his first paper on artificial intelligence in 1988. In the early 1990s he co-founded a startup developing SCADA and industrial control systems, and later served as CIO of a telecom startup, taking it from greenfield to scale-up. He joined Enel in 2001 as CIO of Enel Hydro, then spent a decade heading the group’s global ICT audit function and two years leading its global ICT solution center for corporate functions. Rassega has been Enel’s Group CISO since 2016, responsible for IT, OT, and IoT cybersecurity, including governance, engineering, the group CERT, and digital identity management. He co-founded AssoCISO, the Italian CISO association, and served as its first president. He also sits on the technical scientific committee of Italy’s National Cybersecurity Agency and has contributed to expert working groups for the EU, G7, G20, and the World Economic Forum. He teaches in master’s programs at several Italian universities, has lectured at the country’s air force, naval, and military academies, and holds patents on digital tools and fraud detection methods in Europe, the United States, and Latin America.
Remo Marini – Group CSO, Assicurazioni Generali
Remo Marini spent 15 years with the Polizia di Stato, investigating cybercrime with the Postal and Communications Police and leading a team protecting Italy’s strategic and critical infrastructure. From 2005 to 2015 he also served as a technical advisor in computer forensics for courts in Rome, Milan, Bologna, and Parma, and he spent two years as a researcher at the University of Parma applying AI to forensic X-ray analysis. At UniCredit he designed the algorithms and code for the bank’s mobile token, built its fraud detection system, and set up a cyber intelligence unit, a SOC, and a CERT. Marini joined Generali in 2016 to head group IT and operational risk and security, and has been Group Chief Security Officer since January 2018, responsible for IT and cybersecurity, corporate security, IT risk, and IT governance. He chairs Generali CyberSecurTech, is president of the F3RM1 Foundation, co-founded the Internet Electronic Crime Research Association, and writes about emerging technology on his independent platform, Rewrite.technology.
Alessandro Minoia – Head of Group Security, UniCredit
Alessandro Minoia built his early career in San Marino. He spent nearly a decade at KBE Intelligence as an IT security engineer and later a senior information security engineer, specializing in penetration testing and offensive security. He also founded and ran the KBE Security Academy, sat on the board of the Sammarinese IT Association, and served as a board member and vice president of a public network company. Minoia joined UniCredit’s group cybersecurity team in Milan in 2019. He went on to head cybersecurity infrastructure protection and then cybersecurity solutions, delivery, and innovation. He has led the bank’s Group Security since April 2024. He holds OSCP, CISSP, and CCSP certifications.
Andrea Chittaro – Chief Security & Cyber Officer, Snam
Andrea Chittaro served 24 years in the Arma dei Carabinieri, rising to lieutenant colonel with command roles covering public order, organized crime, and domestic and international terrorism. He joined Snam in 2010 to head security and business continuity and has led the gas transmission company’s security function ever since, guided by the idea of “security as a whole,” treating physical, cyber, and reputational threats as one problem. He became Executive Director of Global Security and Cyber Defence in 2018 and Chief Security and Cyber Officer in November 2025. Chittaro chaired the security study group of Gas Infrastructure Europe for nine years and chaired AIPSA, the Italian association of corporate security professionals. He served on the technical scientific committee of the National Cybersecurity Agency and teaches in the homeland security master’s program at Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma.
Matteo Macina – Director, Head of Cyber Security, TIM
Matteo Macina started as an analyst at Deloitte in Rome and spent seven years in its enterprise risk services practice, rising to manager. He joined Terna, Italy’s electricity transmission operator, in 2015 to work in its security operations center, later leading its computer emergency readiness team and then its Cyber Defence Center. Macina became Director and Head of Cyber Security at TIM in May 2022. He is also operational vice president of the Cyber Security Italy Foundation, which brings together researchers, practitioners, and cyber intelligence experts to promote security culture.
Protecting What the Country Runs On
Italy’s cybersecurity leadership is unusually rooted in public service and critical infrastructure. Chittaro and Marini spent a combined four decades in law enforcement before taking charge of security at a gas transmission company and an insurer. Rassega built Enel’s cyber function after starting out in industrial control systems, and Macina learned his trade defending the electricity grid before taking on the national telecom network. Minoia brings an offensive security background from San Marino to one of Europe’s largest banks. Several of them also shape national policy through the cybersecurity agency and professional associations. In a country where energy, telecom, and finance are tightly linked, these leaders treat security as a national concern as much as a corporate one.
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John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.