Operation Cactus 2026: a massive phishing awareness campaign

A large-scale phishing simulation campaign was carried out in middle and high schools in order to raise awareness among the entire educational community about the number one cyber threat in France. Three million messages were sent to students and their parents through Édifice’s digital workspaces.

Faced with the rise in cyberattacks, prevention has become a major challenge. In this context, the Ministry of National Education, the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL), the French Ministry of Justice, the government website Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr, the French Union of Family Associations (UNAF), the Association for the Protection of Children Online e-Enfance, and French TV France Télévisions launched the second edition of the national Operation Cactus on March 25, 2026. New this year: the campaign was no longer aimed only at students, but also at teachers, education staff, and parents.

Learning to spot phishing traps

Free manga, an alternative guidance platform, free sports equipment… These are the kinds of messages received by secondary school students and parents as part of this simulation. As with many phishing attempts, the offer appears very attractive—sometimes too good to be true—encouraging the recipient to act quickly and containing a suspicious sender address. The goal of this exercise is to learn to identify these warning signs before clicking.

Those who fell for the trap were redirected to an educational message explaining the phishing mechanism. This technique consists of cybercriminals pretending to be a trusted third party in order to obtain personal or banking information. The campaign also relied on posters in schools and on the sending, on March 27, of an explanatory message detailing the approach.

3 million messages sent via Édifice digital workspaces

Teachers and education staff received the test message on their academic email addresses, while students and parents received it via their digital workspace. In total, 9.2 million messages were sent as part of the operation. More than one million recipients clicked on the fraudulent link.

The Édifice digital workspace messaging system for secondary education alone enabled the sending of 3 million messages in a single morning:

• more than one million to students,
• and two million to parents.

A campaign of such scale was made possible thanks to the infrastructure of Édifice’s digital solutions, as well as the mobilization of the team, which helped coordinate the operation and send part of the messages, in collaboration with regional and departmental authorities. Édifice is one of the main software publishers partnered with the French Ministry of Education and local authorities for digital workspaces.

Promoting responsible digital use

For Édifice, taking part in this operation is fully aligned with the core mission of the organization:

• Promoting equal opportunities by giving all students the tools to understand digital and cybersecurity challenges.
• Supporting teachers through educational tools and appropriate awareness programs.
• Encouraging responsible digital use through experience and real-life simulation.

Digital workspaces thus serve as a real-world learning environment for cybersecurity. The goal is to turn students into active participants in their own digital safety and to train cyber-citizens.

In a world where a single click can be enough to compromise personal data, knowing how to recognize digital traps has become an essential skill. To support this campaign, several educational resources were made available.