Sandra Aubert:
Making resilience
a reflex.

QUESTION 01 / SYSWARDEN

Tell us about yourself.

Sandra Aubert

I'm Sandra Aubert, founder of FF2R, From Fiction To Reality, a screenwriter and producer, a risk and crisis management consultant, and a speaker. I also work in cybercriminology, focusing on neuroscience and prevention.

I'm now a local elected official with responsibility for cybersecurity and digital hygiene, and a Defence Correspondent.

The common thread throughout my career is people facing risk: understanding how they perceive a threat, why they can be manipulated and, above all, how to turn knowledge into a defensive reflex.

My conviction: information informs. Emotion transforms.

QUESTION 02 / SYSWARDEN

As an elected official responsible for cybersecurity, cyber resilience and digital hygiene, what do your days look like?

Sandra Aubert

I wanted this responsibility to be very practical, with a clear roadmap: make the town hall a cyber-resilient organisation and extend that resilience to the whole community.

That means working towards compliance and anticipating NIS2, protecting data and essential services, preparing for crises and business continuity, and doing real work on digital hygiene with residents.

In particular, we're developing a dedicated scam response unit, activities for young people around coding and ethical hacking, public events called 'Inside the minds of hackers', and a vigilance barometer.

My aim is simple: bring cyber out of server rooms and into everyday life. A cyber-resilient city needs protected systems, but, above all, prepared staff and citizens.

QUESTION 03 / SYSWARDEN

France has been hit hard by data leaks for more than four months. If you were appointed Minister for Digital Affairs, what would your first actions be?

Sandra Aubert

First, change how we think about a data leak.

Stolen data isn't dead data. It's ammunition. It can be cross-referenced, enriched and reused months later to build a much more credible attack.

So I'd work on three fronts: protecting infrastructure and data, genuinely preparing organisations for a crisis, and a major national programme of digital hygiene starting at school.

With one priority: professionalising human defence just as much as cybercriminals professionalise manipulation.

QUESTION 04 / SYSWARDEN

Digital sovereignty: a misuse of terms or marketing bullshit?

Sandra Aubert

Digital sovereignty is a strategic necessity. The word 'sovereign', however, has sometimes become a marketing argument.

My definition is simple: when everything goes wrong, do we retain our freedom to decide?

Who controls our data and infrastructure? Under which jurisdiction? Which technologies do we depend on? Do we have alternatives?

And I'd add an essential dimension: cognitive sovereignty. Protecting our infrastructure without protecting our collective ability to exercise judgement in the face of deepfakes, disinformation and manipulation won't be enough.

QUESTION 05 / SYSWARDEN

Recommend three books or sources that inform your work and your passion.

Sandra Aubert

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, to understand how we make decisions.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini, to understand the mechanisms of persuasion.

And my third source is the attackers themselves. I study their scenarios, their narratives, the emotions they trigger and the precise moment when they prompt someone to act.

I look at them through a screenwriter's eyes.

To defend better, we also need to learn to think like the attacker.