The Dutch government will spend more money in the coming years on campaigns to increase the cyber resilience of citizens and SMEs. Starting in 2027, the government will structurally reserve 2 million euros annually for the campaigns. The budget set aside for this in 2023 was 600,000 euros.
This is according to a letter from late June. According to former Minister of Justice and Security Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius, it is important that fewer citizens and companies become victims of cyber attacks and that the impact of the attacks is reduced. Therefore, it is essential that citizens and SMEs are informed as much as possible about types of cybercrime and encouraged to take basic cybersecurity measures.
The Ministry of Justice and Security, under which the topic of cybersecurity in government falls, has previously launched specific campaigns on cybersecurity, such as “Don’t Get Internalized” and “Double Secure is Double Safe”. These campaigns focus primarily on social engineering and the use of two-factor authentication.
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Other points of attention in the letter
In her parliamentary letter, the now-former minister also gives an overview of other trajectories in combating cybercrime. Consider the progress of public-private cooperation and international cooperation in this area.
A separate section discusses the progress of evaluating police hacking powers under the Computer Crime Act III. In addition, the minister indicates that the first monitoring report on this hacking power shows that the National Police has an excellent monitoring system in place to ensure that this power is carried out within the legal frameworks, that this does indeed happen, and that the police are constantly improving this monitoring.