Paris (AFP)

Twelve thousand visitors and 450 exhibitors are expected this week at the Lille International Cybersecurity Forum (FIC), an essential trade show in Europe for this booming sector.

This event which brings together private and public actors (administration, police, army, researchers ...) has grown steadily since its creation in 2007, on the initiative of the gendarmerie.

This year, the number of visitors should increase by 20% and that of exhibitors by 30%, according to Guillaume Tissier, the director general of CEIS (European company of strategic intelligence) which organizes the show.

Formerly the prerogative of geeks and other hooded hackers, cybersecurity has become an economic sector at the rate of over-vitaminized growth - more than 10% in recent years -, and a concern more and more widely shared among businesses and individuals.

In 2019, new attacks showed how computer crime had become a mass phenomenon, capable of hitting hard anywhere and anyone.

"We feel real stress among companies on ransomware attacks," said Guillaume Tissier.

In 2019, such attacks wreaked havoc for several days, even weeks, in the networks of several large companies such as the French engineering giant Altran or the agrifood group Fleury-Michon. The operation of the Rouen University Hospital was also seriously disrupted on the weekend of November 16 to 17.

According to Guillaume Tissier, the year 2019 also saw the rise of much more sophisticated attacks, which first target a subcontractor and then manage to enter the network of a large company.

"We see a lot of rebound attacks", he explains, with "smarter" pirates who carry out long-term operations requiring "heavy investments", he describes.

Faced with the imagination of attackers, the arsenal of defenders continues to expand.

In Lille it will be a question of the "zero trust", this policy which consists in particular of constantly checking that any user present on a network is well authorized to act as he does.

It will also be about artificial intelligence, which in Soar technologies (Security orchestration, Automation and Response) automates the handling of incidents to relieve cyber defenders.

- Numeric identity -

In terms of personalities, the FIC will welcome state secretaries Cédric O and Agnès Pannier-Runacher on Wednesday for the signing of the "strategic committee for the security sector".

This document guiding relations between the State and private digital security companies, eagerly awaited by the profession and several times delayed, "will be well signed in Lille" on Wednesday, we confirm in Bercy.

The contract deals with securing major sporting events to come (notably the Olympic Games) and digital identity, a sea serpent in the sector.

The state and industrialists like Thales, Idemia, Atos / Idnomic and others agree on the need to create a strong identification system in cyberspace, before the Gafa preempt it.

This identity could give access to sensitive public or private services, in the health sector for example.

It could be based on the future digital identity card that the Ministry of the Interior is preparing.

But the various state services concerned and the industrialists find it difficult to agree on who should do what, and with what economic model.

Guillaume Poupard, the director general of the French IT security guard, Anssi, will also be present, as will Jérôme Notin, director general of Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr - the agency responsible for strengthening cybersecurity for individuals and PME -, which will present an annual report.

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner could also travel to Lille on Thursday.

© 2020 AFP