Ermes Cyber Security

Ermes Cyber Security is an innovative startup and spin-off of Politecnico di Torino born in April 2017. The startup is composed of a team of researchers from Politecnico di Torino with more than 10 years of research on the phenomenon of Web tracking. Strengthened by this know-how, the team has created Ermes, a platform that, thanks to patented algorithms based on machine learning and big data, helps companies defend themselves from the risks caused by Web trackers.

Web trackers are services created to monitor the operations that users perform on the Web and, from this data, extract profiles and information about them originally for commercial purposes. The amount of information that users unconsciously release on the web with each click allows web trackers to recreate very complete profiles, both on the user and on his device through fingerprinting techniques. This phenomenon is particularly risky for companies, which unknowingly share valuable information to the outside world with every click of their employees. Thanks to the information obtained from the Web trackers, in fact, it is possible to select the most attackable devices and users: in fact, hackers can perform acts of preventive intelligence to understand exactly who to hit and how, increasing the probability of success of an attack. The result is that behind an apparently innocuous promotional email (about a trip, a pair of shoes or a fake colleague) the principle of a targeted cyber attack can be hidden. Finally, by aggregating data at company level, web trackers can easily obtain information on company secrets, such as patents, strategies, investments, and carry out acts of cyber espionage: they therefore represent a real danger for companies, and numerous bodies have already certified that they represent one of the main causes of the ever growing number of cyber attacks.