PARIS, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- France planned to pour more money and human resources into cyber military resources to better defend against cyber attacks from foreign countries, Defense Minister Florence Parly announced on Friday.
Presenting the country's strategy of military cyber defense, Parly warned "France is plagued by enough threats ... (and) the cyber war has begun and France must be ready to fight."
"We must prepare our armies for this new war, ensuring that they have an offensive computer control capabilities. In case of cyber attack, we have the right to retaliate, in the respect of the right," she said.
In a bid to translate pledges into deeds, the minister decided "to increase the resources and consolidate the structure" mainly by investing 1.6 billion euros (1.82 billion U.S. dollars) to bolster the domestic cyber defense and hire additional 1,000 "cyber-fighters" by 2025.
Furthermore, Parly noted the need of better coordination between the armies' different services to form a "coherent defensive chain" that allows to "anticipate, prevent and detect the attacks, and repair their effects".
"In recent years, cyberspace has become a place of confrontation like the others... A place of immense violence, which can permanently block us," Parly said, affirming that French armies had been the target of a hundred cyberattacks in 2017 and 2018. (1 euro = 1.14 U.S. dollar)
