Interior Minister Roberto Maroni on Tuesday inaugurated a new national centre for the fight against cybercrime, describing the phenomenon as ''a serious threat for national security, intellectual property and privacy''.
Opening the CNAIPIC centre, which is tasked with defending critical infrastructures from criminal and terrorist Internet threats, Maroni said Italy was ''second to none'' in the battle against cybercrime.
''In recent years the phenomenon has assumed very worrying dimensions,'' he said, adding that Italy would present its system to world partners during July's Group of Eight summit in L'Aquila.
Domenico Vuliani, the head of the postal police, said CNAIPIC would work 24 hours a day with the dual task of ''predicting attacks through the constant monitoring of the Internet and the repression of the phenomenon''.
Vuliani said examples of when the postal police had intervened in the past included an attempt at industrial espionage against the national railways, uncovering al-Qaeda videos in circulation, and - on the warning of NASA - locating a 20-year-old hacker who had moved satellites belonging to the American space agency.
