France brings together start-ups and household names to tackle hacking scourge

Leaders believe the growing number and sophistication of attacks could undermine country's sovereignty

A thousand people will join forces against hackers at Campus Cyber in Paris. Photo: Markus Spiske

French cybersecurity experts and start-up firms are uniting to tackle the threat from hackers.

Cyberattacks have become the main worry of the world's top company executives, according to a survey by accounting multinational PwC, and French leaders believe their growing number and sophistication could undermine the country's sovereignty.

The announcement from France came as Ukraine fell victim to a hacking attack for the second time in four weeks. Another attack in January was aimed a the Red Cross humanitarian group.

Poland raised its cybersecurity terror threat level last month after the first Ukraine attack.

“France doesn't want to depend on foreigners,” Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said at the inauguration of Campus Cyber, which can host 1,000 people. “It wants to be independent in advanced technologies.”

France built the campus in the capital’s business district, La Defense, as a base for cyber start-ups and experts from some of country's biggest listed companies, including LVMH, L'Oreal and the largest banks.

“For a start-up, to be in the same building as the biggest companies that could put their solutions in their catalogue, it's a great accelerator,” said campus head Michel Van Den Berghe.

Campus Cyber is run by a company that is 44 per cent owned and funded by the French state, with the rest of the capital divided among about 90 organisations.

The project has drawn inspiration from a similar set up in Israel, CyberSpark.

In Ukraine, at least 10 websites stopped working as a result of the attacks, including those of the Defence Ministry, Foreign Ministry, Culture Ministry and Ukraine’s two largest state banks.

Customers at Privatbank and Sberbank reported problems with online payments and banking apps.

The government suggested Russia could be behind Tuesday’s incident.