Given on the departure since February 2022, the director general of Anssi has just formalized his departure in a post on LinkedIn. “After eight years and nine months, I will leave the management at the end of the year”, underlines the boss of the French cyberfireman, without however specifying his future functions. Appointed to this position in 2014, he then succeeded Patrick Pailloux, who left for the technical direction of the DGSE before recently joining the Council of State.
And the news of the day is still Guillaume Poupard’s starting message ? The end of an era… but what an era!! ???https://t.co/thbEwkLC4J
— Gerome Billois (@gbillois) December 2, 2022
Give the means
“The experience was just extraordinary: an extraordinary mission serving the general interest, our fellow citizens, our national security”, emphasizes Guillaume Poupard. And to salute the expertise, the requirement and the commitment of the agents of Anssi, calling in particular to “preserve them from administrative stupidity” and to “give them the means of their action in the long term”.
A graduate of the Ecole polytechnique in 1995, the armaments engineer also holds a doctorate in cryptography with a thesis defended in 2000. He then joined the structure that would become Anssi, the central information systems security department. , as an expert, then head of the cryptography laboratory. Guillaume Poupard then left for the Ministry of Defense in 2006, where in 2010 he became head of the Information Systems Security division, in the technical department of the Directorate General for Armaments, before joining the management of Anssi .
Strong workforce growth
Under his mandate, the agency considerably inflated its staff, going from around 400 agents to around 600. This increase reflects the attention of the public authorities to cybersecurity, a subject which was taken up by the Head of State, last year, with the presentation of a one billion euro support plan. In the administration, the boss of Anssi did not hesitate to step up to defend encryption, for example.
A good communicator, Guillaume Poupard also made Anssi better known to the French under his mandate. Because at the same time, cyberattacks began to make headlines, from the computer attack that paralyzed TV5 Monde to those targeting hospitals. “We continue to be on a growth that can be described as exponential,” he told the Senate this fall.
At the FIC, last June, the boss of Anssi had sketched out a list of subjects to be dealt with after his departure. Like raising awareness, with a national campaign reaching even more citizens, maintaining budgetary priority or even opening up a wider range of tools and services, like the British Active Cyber Defence. The reminder that there is, of course, still a lot to do.