28 April 2019

France bolsters cyber capabilities and commitment through new doctrine


On 18 January 2019, French Minister of the Armed Forces Florence Parly and Chief of the Defence Staff (Chef d’État-Major des Armées: CEMA) General François Lecointre held a press conference in Paris. They unveiled France’s first offensive military cyber-operations doctrine and made excerpts available to the public. The document, entitled ‘Public Elements of the Offensive Cyber Military Doctrine’, details how the country uses offensive cyber tools at an operational and tactical level, explaining the interaction with conventional forces and highlighting the circumstances under which the armed forces would conduct offensive cyber operations. France recognised the importance of cyber defence as part of its security policy in the late 2000s. Several official documents made references to this effect, acknowledging that it had been included in the national defence strategy. The first occurrence was the 2008 White Paper on Defence and National Security, which included a brief mention of offensive cyber operations, among five references to cyber security.

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