France's General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) has just published a new "Flash ingérence" bulletin on the risks of using foreign applications and solutions in the professional environment. The document, revealed by FranceInfo, describes the issue as a "major economic security challenge".
Three real-life cases that illustrate the threat
The domestic intelligence service presents three anonymized scenarios drawn from real cases.
In the first, a subcontractor of a major French group uses a foreign communication solution for all of its business exchanges, regardless of their sensitivity. The data passes through foreign servers that can be accessed by the provider and by the authorities of its home country, exposing the company to extraterritorial rules, even without any activity in that country.
In the second, a company looking to export its products installs foreign software to facilitate its administrative procedures. A security analysis reveals that a second application was installed covertly, maintaining a permanent monitoring process on the internal network with the ability to schedule tasks.
In the third, employees on a business trip are required to install a local application presented as an everyday tool. It turns out to be particularly intrusive: it requires access to the entire content of the phones, creating a high risk of internal company data being captured.
A problem the data measures on a large scale
These cases are not isolated. Pradeo's 2026 mobile security report shows that 42% of the applications installed on a professional mobile device are intrusive: they collect data or access information unrelated to their declared purpose. Each device has an average of 120 intrusive applications, compared with 82 in 2023.
More broadly, over 60% of mobile applications display excessive data exploitation practices.
This data is collected through advertising and analytics SDKs embedded in everyday applications, a phenomenon highlighted by Le Monde's investigation into advertising data that made it possible to reconstruct the movements of French military personnel, police officers and public servants, simply by analyzing geolocation data from apps on their smartphones.
The risk is not limited to intrusive applications. In 2025, Graphite, a spyware developed by the Israeli company Paragon Solutions, was used to target European journalists through a zero-click vulnerability on iOS, making it possible to compromise a device without any user interaction. Once installed, it provides full access to the device's content, exactly the type of threat described in the third case of the DGSI bulletin.
The DGSI's recommendations and how Pradeo addresses them
The DGSI sets out a series of recommendations for companies, research institutes and public administrations. Pradeo provides concrete answers to several of them.
Assess the reputation and reliability of the foreign application's provider before using it.
The Pradeo Mobile Threat Intelligence platform provides access to millions of continuously updated security reports on public mobile applications. It makes it possible to assess the security level, behaviors and vulnerabilities of any mobile application before it is deployed on devices.
Implement a software restriction policy on devices dedicated to professional use, to prevent the installation of third-party software or, at a minimum, a whitelist of authorized software.
The Pradeo Mobile Threat Defense solution makes it possible to define and automatically enforce security policies across an entire mobile fleet: detection and blocking of malicious and intrusive applications, protection against network threats, and verification of mobile device integrity.
Make sure not to systematically grant applications access to the device's data, and limit it to the strict minimum.
Our mobile fleet protection solution identifies applications that access data unrelated to their declared purpose (contacts, geolocation, files, microphone…) and alerts administrators, allowing them to act before a leak occurs.
"Favor French solutions or, failing that, solutions hosted in France" and "make sure to use applications certified by recognized bodies, such as ANSSI or the France Cybersecurity label"
Pradeo is a French company, holder of the France Cybersecurity label, hosted in Europe. It is recognized by Gartner, IDC, Forrester and Frost & Sullivan as the only European global reference in mobile security.
A strong signal for organizations
The DGSI's warning confirms what field data has shown for several years: the mobile device has become a vector for espionage and data leakage that organizations largely underestimate. Whether through openly malicious applications or legitimate tools with excessive data collection practices, the risk materializes at the smartphone level, where protections are often weakest and decisions are made fastest.
