🔴 An Appointment at Campus Cyber, and a Signal to the Ecosystem

Let me begin by congratulating Jeoffrey Célestin-Urbain on his appointment as head of Campus Cyber, France's national cybersecurity hub.

As I have often said, the cyber world is organized into castes and long-standing interest groups that sometimes struggle to work together. Campus Cyber in Paris was supposed to be the place where that collaboration with the state would happen, inspired in part by the Station F model. Something else emerged instead.

I rarely talk about Campus Cyber, because I don't know it well. I was invited there only once, briefly, by its managing director, for a lunch on site. But I never met its members, unlike the Brittany Campus Cyber, which has invited me several times and organized meetings with local entrepreneurs.

I'm very fond of the team and the cyber people in Brittany, who have managed to build an ecosystem that combines goodwill and expertise.

Like many of you, I was sent the two finalists' statements of candidacy. I have included them at the end of this newsletter, in the subscribers' section. Reading them convinced me that we need something alongside the institutions to think about the digital and cyber world.

An appointment that clarifies the state's intent

The appointment of Jeoffrey Célestin-Urbain to Campus Cyber, a senior civil servant, an ENA graduate (the elite civil-service school) from the world of economic intelligence, who is neither an entrepreneur, nor a technologist, nor a politician, suggests that the state is no longer in a logic of developing the Campus, but rather of taking it back in hand.

• The choice seems to mark a return to an administrative and regulatory approach, rather than a strategic one focused on economic development. And this at a time when you can sell a cyber company to Google for 30 billion.
• We are back to a minimum-service strategy: implementing NIS 2, the European regulatory framework, but with no logic of investment, growth or innovation.

The implicit goal: tighten the bolts, more than build an industry.

I understand there is a specific context around Campus Cyber, which has to reach break-even, but I'm not going into those questions (once again, I don't know them). What interests me is the signals being sent.

2025 will not be crossed on autopilot

To every entrepreneur, but also to every senior executive in the cyber world: 2025 is not the year to settle for minimum service.

• Executives and entrepreneurs must take a stand on the digital, cyber and geopolitical issues.
• 2025 is a tipping-point year: those who don't position themselves now will lose the opportunities to come.

The context has changed:

Technological context: the leap in AI capabilities changes the product game, but also the threat. New products need to be launched.

Geopolitical context: a new American posture, amplified Russian and Chinese threats → governance and strategic opportunities need to be brought up to date.

Attacks at scale: demand for cyber is about to explode in every field; this is the moment to grow in Europe, and even in the rest of the world.

Join the Digital Resilience Council

Everyone should set aside at least an hour a week to think about their strategy and their vision for 2025, rather than staying stuck in the day-to-day. That is one of the reasons I created the Digital Resilience Council.

The Digital Resilience Council: a space for free thinking, outside the traditional institutions and the usual scripted scenarios, grounded in an entrepreneurial vision of the digital world.

I invite every cyber startup, and every member of Campus Cyber, to join us!

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The Campus Cyber finalists' statements of candidacy

Content reserved for subscribers