Cybercrime knows no crisis. According to Orange cyberdefense, the number of cyberattacks increased in France by 13% in 2021. First attack technique used by cybercriminals: phishing, with more than 80% of attacks. In terms of financial losses, Cybersecurity Ventures estimates the amount of ransoms extorted from companies worldwide in 2021 at 6,000 billion dollars. And in 2025, the loss forecast is 10,500 billion dollars!
Faced with the proliferation and diversity of cybercrime techniques – phishing, denial of service, cyber fraud, CEO fraud, etc. – companies are increasingly weakened and lost when they fall victim to them. Who to notify? What steps to take?
Cybercrime: a legal framework that is still too fragile
In theory, any company that is the victim of a cyberattack or cyberfraud must quickly file a complaint with the nearest police or gendarmerie. But, if this approach is relevant for insurance, it turns out to be little or even ineffective for undertaking legal proceedings. And for good reason: the complaint is often unusable. Recorded by gendarmes and police commissioners, whose daily lives are rarely confronted with this type of situation, it suffers from a lack of useful information for understanding the modus operandi of cybercriminals and their profiles.
For their part, the contractors, completely distraught by the situation, fail to collect and provide the elements linked to the attack. Result: the complaints are unusable because they are insufficiently documented or too disparate to constitute tangible data.
In an attempt to curb this situation, report templates have been developed and made available to these professionals to support them and help them in drafting the deposition. A laudable initiative but which, alas, ultimately turns out to be ineffective because the existence of these models is often unknown and quickly becomes obsolete.
Another shortcoming: the lack of communication between the police and the gendarmerie and between the brigades. Once the complaint is registered, it is stored and… forgotten. Cross-referencing with other cases therefore becomes impossible, considerably reducing the chances of identifying malicious networks.
Finally, for reasons of image preservation, many companies prefer not to alert the police and the gendarmerie in the event of a cyberattack.
Whether for reasons of shortcomings in the filing of complaints or absence of filing, the consequence is the same: France lacks reliable information to fight effectively against cybercrime.
Solutions to strengthen the fight against cybercrime
We know: the daily life of police stations and gendarmeries is made up of a multitude and great diversity of cases. In this abundance, cyberattacks and cyberfraud are rare offenses and considered minor compared to those they have to manage. It is therefore difficult for them to be successful in an activity that they only practice from time to time. In such a context, why not reorganize this activity and mesh the national territory with police stations and/or gendarmeries trained in this type of business? This professionalization would make it possible to optimize the filing of complaints through better control of the elements to be collected, to implement a certain standardization of documents and to share all the information collected in these bodies. Essential foundations for a more optimal management of cyberdefense.
Another lever for action: raising companies’ awareness of best practices to follow in the event of cyberattacks. It is necessary to inform them upstream of the essential elements to be collected in the event of fraud and/or attacks: phishing emails, fraudulent ribs, IP addresses, etc. Very often, they erase all this data, too preoccupied with restoring their computers.
Finally, the third lever: the pooling by companies of all data and information relating to cyberattacks. Because if companies deploy solutions to fight against cyberattacks, the number of hackers and their ever more efficient professionalism allow them to thwart these tools. The only way out: join forces to get to know cybercriminals better, understand their modus operandi and deploy common combat techniques. Without the creation of this cyber defense community, companies will not be able to fight against cybercrime.
A process initiated by the Ministry of the Interior
It is with this perspective of pooling skills that Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, announced during FIC 2021 the creation of a national service to combat cybercrime bringing together the police and gendarmerie services. “Cyber is a new territory of delinquency which impacts every French person, every company, every administration. It would make no sense to reserve it for a force, it would be like saying: the police are now the only ones to have a car”, he said. But, in mid-January, the project was suspended, for lack of agreement between the two bodies, each considering that it was the most legitimate to fulfill this mission.
A regrettable decision when you know the importance of data in the process of understanding and fighting cybercrime. It is time to share all the information related to cyberattacks and cyberfraud to give ourselves the means to prevent intrusions and take action.