The Cyber Campus, built like the “cybersecurity totem in France” by the government, will be inaugurated this Tuesday, February 15 by Emmanuel Macron. It is located in La Défense, at the gates of Paris, in a 13-storey tower.
The French cybersecurity showcase is unveiled. The Cyber Campus, built like the “cybersecurity totem in France” by the government, will be inaugurated on Tuesday February 15, 2022 by Emmanuel Macron. At the heart of the La Défense business district, at the gates of Paris, this strategic location for national security in virtual space aims to unite the entire French cybersecurity ecosystem on the 13 floors of the Eria tower. .
26,000 m² will thus be made available to players in the sector. The site aims to accommodate companies (large groups, SMEs and start-ups), State services such as the National Agency for the Security of Information Systems (Anssi), training organizations, players in the research and associations, so as to multiply the synergies between the different entities of the ecosystem. In detail, there will be 17,000 m² of private or shared workspaces, 6,000 m² of project and innovation platforms, and 3,000 m² devoted to training. In total, between 1,800 people should work on the Ile-de-France campus. The latter will notably host the start-up Gatewatcher, which has just announced a funding round of 25 million euros. Ultimately, the government hopes that Campus Cyber will give birth to world champions in the sector.
A project that was completed in less than three years
With this flagship of French cybersecurity, the executive wants to encourage collaboration between private actors and public institutions. Many large groups, such as Airbus, Bouygues, EDF, Hermès, La Poste, L’Oréal, LVMH, Renault, Safran and Thales, have thus entered the capital of Campus Cyber to finance the project. For its part, the State holds 49% of the capital of the simplified joint stock company (SAS) created for the occasion.
Officially desired by the government in the summer of 2019, the project will have taken less than three years to see the light of day. After a slew of auditions in the fall of the same year to understand the expectations of all players in the ecosystem and find ways to adapt accordingly, this is the report by Michel Van Den Berghe, former leader from Orange Cyberdéfense chosen to manage the Cyber Campus, which accelerated the realization of the project. Entitled Federate and promote the cybersecurity ecosystem, this document submitted to the Prime Minister in January 2020 defined the main lines of this new structure. In particular, there was talk of a rapid launch in the first half of 2021, but the Covid-19 pandemic ultimately delayed the opening of the campus by a year.
One year after the national plan for cybersecurity
However, the inauguration of the Cyber Campus will allow Emmanuel Macron to make a first progress report almost a year to the day after the presentation of the national plan for cybersecurity which provided for an envelope of one billion euros to accelerate the development of the sector in France. By 2025, the government aims in particular to triple the turnover of the sector (currently 7.3 billion euros), to double the number of jobs and to bring out at least three unicorns. (start-up whose valuation exceeds one billion euros).
“Cybersecurity is everyone’s business, it is imperative that the private and public sectors work together, and the Cyber Campus embodies this collective and sovereign response to the cyber threat. The broad membership of the private sector, ranging from CAC 40 companies to young start-ups, is a strong signal that shows that the issue is better understood by everyone. The campus will be a place of innovation for cyber in France and will be mainly driven by the private sector: this model is unparalleled in the world”welcomed Cédric O, Secretary of State for the Digital Transition and Electronic Communications, in April 2021.
Having become a major subject of sovereignty in the face of the proliferation of online attacks, cybersecurity is now a priority for the Ministry of the Armed Forces, which plans to recruit nearly 1,900 cybercombatants by 2025 to have 5,000 by this horizon. “Our operational superiority, that is to say the ability to maintain the advantage on the ground against malicious actors, depends on our mastery of the digital field. This means better anticipating threats, better detecting and characterizing attacks to provide the means to attribute them. The aim is to protect our networks from this, to make our industrial partners and service providers aware of their own networks. It is therefore a question of defending ourselves, but also of being able to retaliate when necessary, even if France is opposed to the militarization of cyberspace”, explained Florence Parly, the Minister of the Armed Forces, last September at the International Cybersecurity Forum (FIC), in Lille. In this context, the State is betting not only on Paris, with the Cyber Campus, which should become France’s driving force for innovation in the sector, but also on Rennes, which has become a center of French cybersecurity, particularly in terms of hosting the headquarters of the Military Cyber Defense Command (ComCyber).