Hello ️🎉,
Welcome back to the February edition of Récap'IT. This month, I take you inside the hellish aftermath of a cyber attack on the city of Marseille.
I analyze the CNIL's challenges in the face of AI, and decipher the rise of CISOs on boards of directors. One thing is certain: cybersecurity is no longer an option, especially for SMEs.
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"We no longer have an information system. Compromise confirmed", Jérôme Poggi, CISO for the city of Marseille.
On March 14, 2020, everything changes. A massive cyberattack paralyzes the city's systems. J. Poggi plunges into a six-month nightmare. In just a few hours, 1,300 servers and 400 applications went down, paralyzing the municipal administration on the eve of the elections. Nothing worked anymore," he recounts. Agents, deprived of their digital tools, had to relearn how to work with paper and telephone, improvising solutions to continue their day-to-day tasks.
The first few weeks are a high-voltage marathon. It's a shock for IT teams, who find themselves alone in the face of a crisis on an unprecedented scale.
Poggi describes his experience as that of an "aggressive zombie", working tirelessly to rebuild the city's information system. The psychological impact was considerable, not only for him but also for his team, some of whom suffered burn-outs.
Five years after the incident, Mr. Poggi admits that the traumatic memory persists, with palpitations at each new incident. His testimony underlines the urgent need to take into account the intense stress and trauma experienced by IT security managers during cyber attacks, an aspect often neglected in crisis management.
Today, the IS has largely recovered, but the trauma remains. "For six months, I was an aggressive zombie, completely absorbed in rebuilding the IS. No psychological support. Just stress and exhaustion", admits Jérôme Poggi. Over and above the technical and financial impact, it's the human side of things that has been affected. The episode is a stark reminder that town halls and local authorities are prime targets, often under-prepared and under-funded when it comes to cybersecurity. The question is no longer if an attack will occur, but when - and, above all, whether the resources will be up to the task.
Source: ITforBusiness
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Market trends, IT trends, cyberattacks in France... a summary of the news
With the AI Act just around the corner, the CNIL is tackling the challenge of AI, aware that it is still "at the beginning of the road". Its aim is to provide a framework for these technologies without stifling innovation. But generative AI poses unprecedented challenges: opaque models, algorithmic biases, lack of explicit consent.
Three major challenges:
The CNIL has to juggle data protection and support for innovation. With its limited resources, it will have to coordinate with its European counterparts in order to influence the debate. If it succeeds in its technological shift, it could become a key player in AI regulation. Otherwise, it risks being overtaken by the speed of technological advances.
Source : LeMagIT
Cybersecurity is no longer a topic confined to technical teams: it's now part of strategic discussions at board level. CISOs are seeing their role evolve, gaining influence with senior management, a trend that reflects a growing awareness of the challenges posed by cyber threats.
Why this increase in power?
However, this increased recognition of the CISO does not mean that he has carte blanche.
➡️ His major challenge remains pedagogy: transforming technical issues into business challenges that can be understood by non-specialist decision-makers. This means talking about risks, financial impact and business continuity, rather than threats, vulnerabilities and security patches.
This evolution represents both an opportunity and an increased responsibility for CISOs. They are no longer simply guarantors of information systems security: they are becoming key players in corporate strategy. The question now is whether they will have the resources - human, technical and budgetary - to meet the growing expectations placed upon them.
Source : IT Social
SMEs are no longer immune to cyberattacks. Ransomware, phishing, data theft: they have become prime targets for cybercriminals, precisely because they still think they're too small to be of interest. The bad news is that their vulnerability makes them easy prey, and they often play a key role in larger ecosystems, making their compromise all the more profitable for attackers.
At the same time, regulations are getting tougher. With NIS 2 and other obligations on the horizon, cybersecurity is no longer a subject that can be put off for lack of time or budget. One attack can be enough to jeopardize a company's survival, and the trust of customers and partners is much harder to rebuild than an information system.
So, yes, investing in cybersecurity may seem restrictive, but today it's essential. Solutions exist: strong authentication, regular backups, team awareness... The important thing is to stop believing that it only happens to others.
Source: L'Essor de la Sécurité
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L'Opéra National du Rhin : was hacked and over 200,000 items of data were leaked.
The Berson town hall: was the victim of a cyber attack resulting in the loss of its data, and a ransom was demanded.
Bain de Bretagne town hall: also the victim of a cyber attack.
CESI : the engineering school suffered a cyberattack that cut off the Internet and disrupted classes.
Orange : a non-critical application was breached. Rey, a member of the HellCat group, claimed responsibility for the attack. Rey claimed to have stolen 380,000 addresses, while Orange claimed to have stolen 12,000 files.
Chronopost : 7.3 million data sets were put up for sale, and the company notified its customers by e-mail.
An MSP: 200 small and medium-sized businesses are managed by this MSP and therefore affected. The hacker resells access to all the employees and software of these companies.
Caisse des Dépôts : suffered a major cyber-attack resulting in a leak of personal data from 70,000 members of the Ircantec pension scheme.
ByBit : the crypto exchange platform was attacked with a loss of $1.4 billion in Ethereum.
PowerSchool : in the USA, this platform used by over 18,000 schools was hacked, affecting 62 million students and 9.5 million teachers. This attack reveals major flaws in poorly protected school systems.
DOGE : yes yes yes, it's still one of the biggest federal data breaches in the US, as Musk and his team gained unauthorized access to critical systems.
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