Cyber Resilience, Crises and Systemic Risks: Key Takeaways from Our 3rd Cyber Thursday

During the latest edition of Cyber Thursdays, cyber crises were analysed from every angle: threat identification, impact assessment, and operational response strategies.

Understanding the Evolution of Cyber Resilience

The evening began with a keynote by Guillaume Chéreau (Alcyconie), who traced a brief history of resilience. He revisited significant events, from the WannaCry attack in 2017, which revealed the first signs of vulnerability, to recent incidents affecting CrowdStrike and Jaguar Land Rover, highlighting new cybersecurity challenges. The Jaguar attack alone even shaved off part of the UK’s September GDP.

Guillaume also emphasised progress made in protection, detection, and incident response, underlining the need to anticipate threats and strengthen organisational resilience.

Systemic Risks and Collective Resilience

Following his keynote, Guillaume Chéreau was joined by Gwenn Feunteun (ACCEIS), Wilfried Thebault (Nestlé Nespresso SA) et Gaël Musquet (Hackers Against Natural Disasters) for a highly instructive panel discussion.

The speakers highlighted several key points:

• The need to consider a broad attack surface (systems, applications, humans) when anticipating threats.
• Cyber risks are multiple and systemic: protecting one’s own systems is not enough; interdependencies with other actors (suppliers, partners, etc.) must also be taken into account.
• A crisis is also a human trauma, causing stress, panic, and lasting psychological effects.
• Responses vary depending on company size and how different functions perceive risk (management, administrative staff, production, business units…), but the consequences of an attack can be equally critical.
• Cybersecurity and data protection regulations contribute effectively to risk reduction.
• Autonomy in degraded conditions is a major issue: it allows an organisation to continue operating and responding even when primary infrastructures are unavailable.
• Above all, the importance of fostering awareness, training, and sensitising all business functions to enhance resilience.

The speakers reminded the audience that these issues affect all of us: continuity of healthcare, business operations, consumer trust… Behind every averted crisis lies the protection of a part of our daily lives.

The Cyber Thursday concluded with a networking cocktail, giving students the opportunity to ask questions and engage directly with the experts in a spirit of sharing and conviviality.