The School of Engineering hosts a conference on entrepreneurship in cyber intelligence

Carlota Escolano, CEO of Ciberin Foresight, talked about “Entrepreneurship in the world of cyber intelligence” on Monday, 27 October, at the Pirineos Campus. Over 50 students from the School of Engineering attended the session, where Escolano described the main challenges she faced and lessons she learned as a cyber intelligence entrepreneur. She also addressed the main differences between cybersecurity, intelligence and cyber intelligence, and described her startup’s current project: an advanced predictive intelligence platform that will anticipate risks and threats faced by large companies.

Among the main perils and insights of entrepreneurship, she highlighted constant uncertainty, limited resources, failure as a learning tool, quick decision-making, the importance of a good team and company culture, flexibility in the face of reality, and the need for networking and external support.

Escolano explained that cyber intelligence collects, analyses and transforms digital information to anticipate risks and make strategic decisions, identifying threats, trends and behaviours that may cause problems for companies. She also talked about “OSINT” (Open-Source Intelligence) and the large amounts of data available in open sources, such as social media, news outlets or Internet forums.

The CEO of Ciberin Foresight added that the role of cybersecurity, in contrast to cyber intelligence, is to protect systems, networks and data against attacks or unauthorised access, and that intelligence, which includes actions like monitoring communications, analyses and organises data to obtain actionable knowledge.