EBRC advocates Cyber-Resilience. What is that exactly?
Without necessarily realizing it, our civilization is rocketing towards a new world, the digital world, at a dizzying speed. In the physical world, Men are used to anticipate and deal with constant threats to minimize their exposure to the dangers that surround them: viruses, bacteria, accidents – they wash their hands, eat healthily, etc. In the digital world, hygiene is digital but Men behave like new-born babies: no reflexes, no defence. Being cyber-resilient means having cyber-immunity against threats and therefore being protected at all times.
Cyber-Resilience, cybersecurity, is there really a difference between the two?
Since 2017, companies have had to contend with attacks at an unprecedented scale: billions of items of personal data have been stolen, hundreds of flights have been cancelled due to failures in Data Centers, democratic elections were manipulated, and more.
Cybersecurity is outdated, and building higher and higher walls is useless. Today you can be certain that you are going to be attacked. The right questions are: When will it happen? How? What will be the impacts? We need to take preventive measures, to anticipate, to have an organization and a culture of Cyber-Resilience to be able to deal with increasingly complex and changing threats. It is also a matter of being prepared so that when that day comes and a company is faced with a major shock, the immune system can help us cope with it, with as little damage as possible, and get the system up and running again as quickly as possible. That is what Cyber-Resilience is all about: it is a paradigm shift, a global approach that goes beyond pure defence, an approach that starts with risk analysis and leads to the implementation of an appropriate action plan with counter-measures.
Meaning that Man still has a role to play in the digital world?
Total protection against a cyber-attack is impossible. Even with colossal investments, technology cannot protect everything; it is above all an issue of having a culture at the centre of which human beings and their common sense effectively regain their place. Everyone, from the receptionist to the CEO, needs to immerse themselves in the basic rules of digital hygiene and respect them, while being fully aware of the risks involved. Cyber-Resilience will therefore enable organisations to react efficiently to a threat, thanks to an awareness that cuts across the whole company. This is what we advocate at EBRC.
On that topic, what is EBRC's ambition?
Historically, we have been positioning ourselves in the hosting of critical IT resources in the banking and finance sector. Cyber-Resilience, Hybrid Cloud, Data Centres (three out of five of our Data Centres are Tier IV certified, supplied with green energy), facilities management, security: we intervene from A to Z, to manage and protect the sensitive data of our clients operating in the fields of fintech, health, space, defence, and e-commerce. We rely on the security, agility and proximity of our services to compete with global players, often American or Asian ones, which have been developing global but standardised offers. Our ambition is to become a centre of excellence and a centre of digital trust centre in Europe.
A final word on the French association Hexatrust of which you are a member?
Hexatrust brings together companies active in the Trusted Cloud and Cybersecurity sector. It has set itself the objective of promoting trust in the European digital world and developing this concept among all stakeholders in the European digital space. The objective is to pool a number of solutions and expertise from European companies in order to capitalize on our strengths and highlight French and European know-how in the field of cybersecurity and Cyber-Resilience.