'Get used to it' says Dutch minister after major emergency services outage

Translated article:

A persistent disruption at the Ministry of Defense grounded aircraft on Wednesday and caused problems for various government agencies. While the cause is now known, the incident highlights the vulnerability of our digital society.

Prime Minister Dick Schoof called the disruption "incredibly annoying," but noted that every computer system is inherently vulnerable. "Phones sometimes stop working too. The same goes for systems," Schoof said. "You know it can never be 100% error-free. But it should be."

Justice Minister David van Weel commented that the disruptions mainly caused inconvenience. "Even at the Ministry of Defense, there can be a disruption," he said. "It doesn’t necessarily have to be an attack. Get used to it, I’d say."

The government's reactions did not sit well with Bert Hubert, a tech expert and former overseer of intelligence services. He believes the government doesn't grasp the seriousness of the situation. "It's like saying: this happens sometimes," he said.

Hubert compares it to airbags in a car. If they don’t work, you can keep driving, he says. "But you shouldn’t get into an accident. The fact that the coast guard has been unreachable all day means that no ship should sink today."

*See also: Cause of major network disruption still unclear: 'Doesn’t appear to be sabotage'*

*Becoming more resilient faster*

Experts say that whether it’s a cyberattack or a software glitch, the impact can be severe. Just last month, a faulty update at cybersecurity company CrowdStrike crippled 8.5 million computers globally, halting air traffic and forcing hospitals to cancel surgeries. Today’s situation didn’t reach that level.

Dave Maasland, director of cybersecurity company ESET Netherlands, warns that the digitization of society should be higher on the government’s agenda. "The biggest mistake would be not learning from what happened today," he says.

Maasland agrees with Schoof that a digital world can never be 100% safe. "That’s why resilience is so important," he says. "How do you respond to an attack or system failure, and how quickly can you return to normal?"

*'Systems are too complex'*

According to Hubert, the response on Wednesday was too slow. The coast guard reported a disruption via a message on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday evening. "I expected the government to scale up immediately and wake up to a list of everything that was broken," he says. "But this afternoon, we’re still figuring out where the fault lies."

Government and corporate networks have become too complex over the years, Hubert laments, and are too often connected to the cloud. "For critical departments, we should use simpler systems and rely more on in-house expertise," he says. "There should always be people who know how the systems work by heart, ready to respond in emergencies."

Maasland also sees room for improvement in communication. "It takes too long for information about the problems to come out, and it comes from various sources," he says. "The National Cyber Security Center issued a message on X, the Utrecht Safety Region released information through its own channel, and the Ministry of Defense also made a statement. But who is leading here?"

Hubert doesn’t expect improvement from the current cabinet soon. "Almost no one in the government understands computers or cares about them," he says. "I say this strongly because of what happened today. The people saying 'get used to it' have been exposed."