Frédéric Germain, HarfangLab - A Cyber Hero by CaptainCyber

Who are you?

Grégoire Germain, president and founder of HarfangLab.

What is your cyber CV?

I have a long history in this field because I am a former military man, I have always worked in information systems and obviously in digital combat. After that, I worked in everything that is computer combat, defensive or offensive, and so I arrived in cybersecurity today, really in the defensive part.

Do you have to be a former military man to be good at cyber?

Absolutely not. You probably have to be an engineer when you want to develop solutions. And above all, you need to have an appetite for technology because it's a field that is really evolving a lot and there is an appetite for innovation.

What is HarfangLab?

It's a software editor and we make a tool that allows us to fight, a real assault rifle, against cyber attackers. Today, you have computer attacks that are increasingly sophisticated. You have attackers who are installing themselves in networks. And then, there is a whole criminal economy that has been organized and therefore, you need sophisticated, high-performance and intrusive tools to fight these attackers on an equal footing and flush them out.

Why choose HarfangLab and not its competitors?

Information systems security managers are faced with threats that cross the barriers put in place, natural barriers, such as antivirus and firewalls, which are absolutely necessary, but which must be complemented by more advanced tools. An EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) responds to this need because it will allow us to detect weak signals of an attack, to carry out investigation actions and, above all, to remedy and kill the attackers. And in fact, we will try to do all this quickly thanks to our all-in-one tool and save time in the fight against threats.

Are executives and CISOs sensitive to cyber issues?

What I have noticed is that CISOs, especially following the military programming law which now designates organizations of vital importance, are very sensitive to this aspect of trust, and we are becoming aware that espionage is becoming more and more industrialized, in a way. We need to protect ourselves against these threats and I think that managers and CISOs are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of maintaining a certain level of sovereignty in their tools.

Will we still need humans to ensure cyber defense?

I'm not going to comment on such a philosophical question, but I think that yes, there will always be a need for humans. It's a bit the same problem with cars. We can ask ourselves the question: will we need a driver in a car? I think that in a school bus, there will always be a driver.

Do you talk about cyber at home?

It also involves discussion. I am thinking in particular of children, where through discussion and instruction, we teach them the things of life.