Alcyconie: tailor-made support for cyber crisis management! – ITPro.fr

Cyber crisis, training platform, training, exercises, cyber resilience… it’s time to find out more!

We spoke with Stéphanie Ledoux, founder and CEO, and Sabri Mezghiche, CMO at Alcyconie, a French specialist in cyber resilience and crisis management and communication, based in Saint-Malo, with offices also at Campus Cyber in La Défense.

Accelerated development

Alcyconie was created in 2018 by Stéphanie Ledoux, with the aim of addressing all cross-cutting issues in a crisis, as applied to cyber crises. Initially self-financed in order to confirm the market and position its offering, Alcyconie raised €3.4 million in 2023 to accelerate its development.

This means “First, expanding our team, which has grown from 10 to 22 employees today; developing our software tailored to cyber crises (training, live crisis response); and internationalising our business, as we are already operating in Europe and the United States.”

Alcyconie’s experts train executives, executive committees, and operational teams (from the first line of defence and detection) from various organisations, sensitive players (OIVs and OSEs), major CAC 40 groups, and the worlds of finance, healthcare, telecoms, and local authorities.

Cyber crisis management

Alcyconie will therefore prepare organisations to deal with cyber attacks and support them during such attacks, in order to strengthen their autonomy and resilience. But how exactly?

Preparation and anticipation are obviously essential. “We are convinced that a prepared organisation will have better reflexes to limit the effects. There will never be zero damage, but the goal is to limit the damage.”

Preparation therefore involves theoretical aspects, i.e. defining a crisis response plan and reflex sheets, a way of making decisions in a crisis situation. “It’s about defining a specific operating procedure for a degraded situation.” This is an important first step. But, “We strongly believe in following up, i.e. training teams, explaining what we are going to go through, explaining what a crisis is, explaining the right attitudes to adopt, etc.”

Next comes operational preparation with crisis exercises and training to adopt and develop the right reflexes. “We explain the rules, you have to learn them, then train and trigger the right reflexes as a team. Crisis management is really a team sport.”

Crisis unit

Preparing organisations is one thing, but being there when they come under attack is another.

In this sense, Alcyconie helps crisis teams “get to grips with the situation” in various ways. “A cyber crisis is so intense, sudden and stressful that we are there to support them and help them get started.” Alcyconie’s expert teams also provide support on two specific topics: legal aspects (legal and regulatory obligations, compliance, etc.) and cyber crisis communication aspects (communication, pressure, reputation, etc.).

Finally, Alcyconie supports teams in recovering from crises. “A cyber crisis takes a long time to resolve, and recovering from it also takes weeks and leaves its mark on technical and other teams, who are affected by what has happened. We provide support during this phase, working in collaboration with psychologists in particular.”

With the Olympic Games approaching!

So, how are you preparing organisations for the upcoming Olympic Games? “Typically, for a sensitive player who has asked us for an intensive training programme leading up to the Olympics, we run a series of crisis exercises. In concrete terms, we simulate a cyberattack, plunge them into a crisis situation and connect them to our training platform, where they find social networks, media, email accounts, as well as requests from the authorities, employees and the media.” The goal is therefore to provide training in real-life situations.

Crisis exercises are a very pragmatic, concrete and operational way of preparing. In 2023 alone, Alcyconie organised more than 140 crisis exercises and intends to increase the pace in 2024. “Internationally, we carry out many crisis exercises (American, Polish, etc.) and train crisis units, taking into account cultural differences, which become very apparent during a crisis.”

A team of experts

If 2024 is a year in which intensified threats collide with events such as the Olympic Games, European and American elections, the NIS 2 Directive, conflicts, etc., “this intensification of threats will be accompanied by new emerging methods, information attacks and destabilisation, which are levers for cyberattacks that will increasingly affect organisations. These are topics we are working on with our analysts in geopolitics, international relations and law, who are closely studying the context, the sector and the issues at stake and preparing scenarios. We are thus approaching the cyber world in a different way, and crisis management brings together a team of passionate professionals!”

Since its creation, Alcyconie has trained 2,500 people in cyber crisis management within French and international organisations, and aims to become the European leader in cyber resilience.

Article written by Sabine Terrey for ITPro.fr.