Following the roundtable organised with the Essonne Department and Essonne Numérique, discussions focused on cybersecurity for local authorities.
Initiated by François Durovray, President of the Essonne Department, Michel Bournat, Vice-President of the Department and President of Essonne Numérique, and Patrick Imbert, Vice-President of the Department and of Essonne Numérique, the meeting brought together complementary perspectives from elected officials, the gendarmerie, cyber experts, IT departments and crisis management professionals.
Contributions from Commandant Olivier Langou of the Essonne departmental gendarmerie, Olivier Thaëron, Managing Director of Shadline, Pierre-Antoine Bonifacio, Cybersecurity Director at AISI, and Baptiste Ollivon, CIO of the Communauté de Communes du Val d’Essonne, underlined a key message: cyber risk is no longer solely a technical issue.
For a local authority, a cyberattack can mean paralysed public services, inaccessible essential data, disrupted communications, loss of residents’ trust and difficulty coordinating decisions within hours.
The question goes beyond: “Are we protected?”
It also becomes: “Can we keep operating if an attack occurs?”
This is the purpose of cyber resilience: anticipate, organise crisis management, preserve vital data and maintain business continuity in fallback mode.
Elected officials must be fully involved in decisions. They bear responsibility for public service continuity, residents’ protection and the authority’s ability to respond in the first hours of a crisis.
A recovery or continuity plan must therefore go beyond a technical document and answer practical questions:
- Which services must keep running?
- Which data must remain accessible as a priority?
- Who makes decisions if email, servers or business applications are unavailable?
- How do elected officials, senior management and services communicate when their usual tools are blocked?
- How can residents be informed without worsening the crisis?
At Shadline, we believe a local authority must retain its ability to act even when its IT systems are degraded or unavailable.
Our approach provides sovereign crisis management and business continuity capabilities that are simple to activate, enabling secure communication, access to critical information and crisis coordination.
I would welcome further discussions with local authorities seeking to involve elected officials, senior management and operational services in a practical approach to cyber preparedness, business continuity and crisis management.