‘Majority of Dutch companies do not see cybercrime as a threat’.

According to research by SIDN and Connectis, the vast majority of Dutch companies do not see cybercrime as a threat among more than 500 companies. 90 percent say they do not see any (serious) danger in cybercrime for their own organisation.

67.7 percent of companies say they see cybercrime as “a little threatening”. 17.6 percent of respondents do not see cybercrime as a threat at all. This is despite the fact that there is something to be done at every company, says Roelof Meijer, director of SIDN in the Netherlands. These include, for example, customer data and intellectual property.

“Even companies without a webshop or online services are an interesting and often easy prey. Entrepreneurs need to become more aware of this. Online security should be a central part of every business.”

Malware

According to the respondents, if something does happen, there is a good chance that malware is the cause of it. Nearly 60 percent say that this type of attack is the most threatening for their own organisation. DDoS attacks and theft of intellectual property and customer data are also high in larger organisations.

However, according to the study, ‘the human being’ is the largest security breach. For example, Aad van Boven of SecureMe2 states in the report that 32 percent of the cyber-alarms they receive have been started by humans. “These include attacks such as phishing and emails containing ransom or malware links.

The report therefore recommends setting up awareness training courses for employees. However, according to the report, only 16 percent of companies invest in training and instruction.

Investments

According to the study, many companies see cyber security as a technical issue, which means that the subject is placed with the IT department or an individual IT employee. However, IT professionals are not necessarily also experts in the field of cybercrime.

Moreover, companies do not seem willing to invest much in cyber security. The budgets for this subject have remained largely unchanged over the past twelve months. Even among the respondents who claim that cybercrime is a real threat, 69.4 percent have not released more money for the security of business processes.