Protection against cyber threats: an ongoing challenge

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Governments and companies are insufficiently protected against cyber threats. This is the conclusion drawn from 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 cyber criminals. The biggest threat comes from foreign intelligence services that collect and manipulate political, military, and technological information in our country on a large scale. Additionally, we see that cybercrime is increasingly available as a service, making it accessible to a larger group of criminals. In the battle against the ever more sophisticated attack methods of cyber criminals, additional measures are necessary. Dialogic has conducted a trend analysis and an international comparison for this research. In the trend analysis, we examined several significant cyber attacks: cyber fraud, ransomware, digital espionage, and DDoS attacks. The following conclusions were drawn from the trend analysis:

Digital espionage is currently the greatest threat and is likely to remain so. Attackers have access to significant funds and resources, allowing them to utilise advanced tools. Protection against these advanced tools, often exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities, is (and will remain) extremely challenging.
Cyber fraud, on the other hand, seems to be under control. Banks have implemented various measures to increase resilience, including highly effective awareness campaigns. The damage caused by internet banking fraud decreased from nearly 35 million euros in 2012 to less than 5 million euros in 2014.
Ransomware and DDoS attacks have experienced rapid growth in recent years and are causing increasing damage. This is mainly due to the rise of as-a-service models which enable criminals to carry out attacks with little money and minimal expertise.
Regarding DDoS attacks, the emergence of the Internet of Things poses an additional threat. More devices are being connected to the internet, yet the security of these devices is often inadequate. This allows cyber criminals to easily hack these devices and use them in a DDoS attack. Measures have been taken to increase resilience, such as a National Anti-DDoS Scrubbing Centre and the No More Ransom initiative. However, these measures have not yet resulted in a decrease in the number of DDoS and ransomware attacks.