Governments and companies insufficiently protected against cybercrime. • Dialogic

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Governments and businesses are insufficiently protected against cyber threats. This is the conclusion of research conducted by the Rathenau Institute and Dialogic.

The Netherlands, as one of the most ICT-intensive economies in the world, is an attractive target for cybercriminals. The biggest threat comes from foreign intelligence services that extensively collect and manipulate political, military, and technological information in our country. Furthermore, we see that cybercrime is increasingly becoming available as a service, making it accessible to a larger group of criminals.

Additional measures are necessary in the fight against the increasingly sophisticated attack methods of cybercriminals. For this research, Dialogic conducted a trend analysis and an international comparison.

In the trend analysis, we examined several significant cyber-attacks: cyber fraud, ransomware, digital espionage, and DDoS. The following conclusions emerge from the trend analysis:

Digital espionage is currently the greatest danger and is expected to remain so. Attackers have access to significant resources, enabling them to use advanced tools. Protection against these advanced tools, which often exploit zero-day vulnerabilities, is (and will remain) almost non-existent.
Cyber fraud, on the other hand, appears to be under control. Banks have implemented various measures to enhance resilience, including educational campaigns that have proven to be highly effective. The damage caused by online banking fraud has decreased from nearly €35 million in 2012 to less than €5 million in 2014.
Ransomware and DDoS have experienced rapid development in recent years and are causing increasing damage. This is mainly due to the emergence of as-a-service models, allowing criminals to execute attacks with minimal resources and without extensive knowledge.
For DDoS, the rise of the Internet of Things poses an additional threat. More devices are being connected to the internet, but the security of these devices is often inadequate. Cybercriminals can easily hack into these devices and use them for a DDoS attack. Measures have been taken to enhance resilience, such as a National Anti-DDoS Washing Station and the No More Ransom initiative. However, these measures have not yet resulted in a decrease in the number of DDoS and ransomware attacks.

Read more about the research in other media:

Download the report here.