Colonel Jean-François Laloyer, from Comcybergend (Gendarmerie command in cyberspace), plays a video game with elected officials and business leaders gathered at the Belfort village hall. The scenario: you are at the head of a community, victim of a cyberattack. “It’s like the Covid-19. The question is not if you will have it, but when you will have it”, he says. Indeed, the threat is real, and much more common than you think.
10 attacks per minute at the county council
For example, the departmental council of the Territoire de Belfort is undergoing 10 intrusion attempts per minute. This is what Lahid Lechekhab, its director of information systems, notes. “It could be attempted ransom demands, identity theft, data theft. Luckily, we didn’t go all the way.”he explains.
The town hall of Dasle was less fortunate. She was paralyzed for several days by a hack in June 2022. The mayor of Bavilliers, Éric Koeberlé, came to train to avoid the same fate. “To our knowledge, we haven’t had a major cybersecurity issue. But just because we didn’t realize it doesn’t mean there wasn’t.”he said.
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Here’s what he took away from the training: “An attack is not necessarily intended to destroy an information system. It can also install software which is then used to relay attacks to other machines, other communities, other companies. So we don’t is never safe, even if we didn’t realize it today”. He leaves with a few good reflexes in case of attack : isolate the affected equipment, change its passwords, and above all warn experts and the authorities, so as not to be left alone against hackers.