Philippe Goossens, partner at Altana in charge of white-collar crime, led a passionate debate on corporate cyber-security during the Business Legal Forum held in Paris on 8 October.

Before a full audience of general counsels, human resources directors and journalists, Rear-Admiral Riban, representing the ANSSI (National agency of information security) gave a very precise panorama of cyber threats, particularly explaining that all companies are vulnerable and likely to be attacked. Jean-Paul Mazoyer of CIGREF provided a reminder of the importance of being prepared against risks, of anticipating them and thus being trained, particularly in order to reboot the systems as quickly as possible after an attack.

Jean-Marie Gauvain, Risk Director at Casino, emphasized that better internal information leads to prevention. Philippe Goossens reminded the audience that in a legal context this threat concerns employment and corporate litigation as much as it does IT, which is why Altana proposes a transversal cyber-security approach.