Nationwide Network Outage Disrupts Key Public Services in the Netherlands

Network failure disrupts public services

There was a network failure on 28 August 2024 which disrupted several public services in the Netherlands. These included Eindhoven airport, local government, the Ministry of Defence, telecommunications and Digid.

It looks like the first signs of disruption started on Tuesday night, around 10:30 PM, with some alarm and communications systems affected.

The latest from the Ministry of Defence is that it looks like a failure in their own network caused the problem, and they’re working hard to get everything back up and running as soon as they can.

Lessons learned

What we can learn from this is that the Ministry of Defence needs to look at where its systems could be more robust and that, even if it has a backup plan, it might not have been able to avoid the disruption to public services.

For the public service providers, this is a lesson in checking their suppliers, in this case the Ministry of Defence, to make sure that there’s as little chance as possible of this happening again. So, it’s really important to have a Service Level Agreement in place.

It’s better to be safe than sorry.

This is another example of the risks of relying on a third party for your core business processes. You probably don’t have a Ministry of Defence in your supply chain, but it’s worth remembering that you could be in the position of the supplier who disrupted someone else’s business, as well as the business who got affected by its supplier. In either case, your role could be risky for others and others could be risky for you.

Both big and small businesses are learning that cybersecurity is really important for their success. In this new digital age, we’re more dependent on digital services than ever. At the same time, the moment we add a supplier, we often don’t realise that we are also adding to our supply chain with critical services. They could fail at some point, which could impact our business.

At Proteon, we build bridges between SMEs and cybersecurity. We protect what you’ve worked too hard to build. Discover our services and start ensuring your future today.