Bomb alerts, the request from the garrisons: «We need a centralized alert channel»

A centralized alert channel that can alert schools in real time when a massive attack is underway. This is the proposal put forward by Antonello Giannelli, national president of the National Association of Principals, after two days of chaos in institutions across the peninsula due to bomb alerts arriving via email. Days of panic which, according to ANP, although no bomb was actually found, "left their mark on students, families and staff".

On the morning of November 11, a wave of emails with threatening content reached - with the exact same text and almost simultaneously - the institutional inboxes of over six thousand Italian schools, forcing more than three hundred institutions to evacuate their buildings. A cyber attack which has recent precedents in various countries on the continent, from Scotland to Serbia, and which continued on Thursday 12 November, when, according to provisional data from Palazzo Chigi, 3,778 schools were reached by threats via e-mail messages. However, there were 77 evacuations and in 36 of these schools teaching activity resumed the same morning.

«It is easy - commented Giannelli - to judge in hindsight, once the danger has been averted. Instead, we need to empathize with those who, being responsible for hundreds or even more than a thousand children and young people, have had to face a risk, however unlikely, with the consequences of a sudden exit, full of fear, crying fits, apprehensive parents and outdoor spaces that need to be made safe."

What has happened in recent days, explained Giannelli, «also forces us to recognize that the interconnected world in which we live, so comfortable in many ways, has its fragilities and that the freedom we enjoy in Western countries can be exploited by bad actors to sow fear with a simple email message. That doesn't mean we have to give it up."

Precisely for this reason, the president of the PNA invites the parties involved to "look clearly at the weak points of the system". The objective, according to Giannelli, is to ensure that no school finds itself facing threatening messages alone: ​​the request is to review the alert system and identify a common line, to avoid a heterogeneity of choices. Since the email addresses are public for reasons of transparency and the institutional mailboxes are managed centrally by the Ministry of Education, the ANP asks the MIM to "design filtering and recognition systems for recurring patterns".