LILLE- France will soon launch a 1.5-billion-euro ($2 billion) plan to defend itself against “cyber war” as a strategic priority, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Tuesday.
The project, to be launched “in a few weeks”, will be written into the French military budget over the next five years, Le Drian told a cyber-security forum in the northern city of Lille.
“The scale needs to be changed” given that cyber attacks against French defense ministry organs have quadrupled in two years, he said.
In an interview to Les Echos newspaper, the minister was more specific.
Risks, he said, were increasing of either attempts to paralyze government servers or to destroy information and command systems.
“They are general localized attacks coming from foreign powers or activist groups, but they clearly show intrusion attempts into networks able to affect our forces operating abroad or even our partners,” he said.
Defensive measures taken could be broadened through cooperation with other EU nations, either through shared platforms or expertise, he added.
At the Lille conference, Le Drian said his ministry aimed to recruit more IT and programming experts to extend protection, train up existing staff, and to use networking technology to better support French troops.
Personnel in the cyber division of the ministry’s armaments unit will nearly double to 450 in coming years, he vowed, “and we will triple the volume of studies dedicated to cyber issues”.
Related: Israeli Defense Computer Hit in Cyber Attack
Related: Improved Cyber Security Could Save Global Economy Trillions
Related: Cyberwar – The Dynamics and the Logic of Might
Related: Cyberwar is Reality World Must Fight: UN Official
Related: Cyber War and the Threat of the Boomerang Effect
Related: Definition Of ‘Cyberwar’ In Flux, Threat Of Cyber Weapons Underestimated
Related: While Connections Exist Between Cyber Weapons, Many Secrets Remain