Recent News, Tips and Warnings

The risk of cyber attacks continues to rise. On average, there are 100 cyber attacks every day, an increase of 37% compared to 2019. Almost 70% of these attacks escape prosecution. Testimonies from companies that have been victims of cyber attacks show that they are often in the dark or improvising at the time of a cyber incident. Experts from the Federation of Enterprises in Belgium (FEB) and the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium have therefore drawn up a roadmap in close collaboration with the business community and public authorities. A guide that accompanies companies from the moment they discover the incident until the situation is normalised.

If not patched and looked after regularly, a company network infrastructure and website will present flaws or weaknesses, called vulnerabilities, that can be exploited by an opponent to cause damage or perform unauthorized actions. This could result in compromising the confidentiality (e.g. private information leakage), the integrity (e.g. unauthorized modification of data), or the availability (e.g. website down) of resources.

Boards have a statutory duty to have proper risk oversight. Cyber risk constitutes by now a critical, potentially material, business risk. However, most Boards are ill-equipped to deal with cyber risks. They consider cyber as too technical, they merely approve resources and delegate the risk.

The question is not "if" you will ever fall victim to a cyber attack, but "when". So you need to be prepared. Here are the recommendations for effective communication in the event of a cyber attack.

It's not possible to prevent any and all cyber attacks, but there are things you can do. Cyber experts and security firms continue to insist that basic security actions can make a big difference, not only for individual internet users but also for companies and organizations: recognize and warn about phishing, use strong passwords and two-factor authentication (2FA), and patch and update systems in a timely manner.

By involving the general public, as many as 14 million clicks to suspicious websites were avoided in 2022. This equates to about 25 alerts to internet users per minute. If you know that Belgium has a population of 12 million, you understand that these are huge numbers.  This is the result of the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium's Belgium Anti-Phishing Shield (BAPS), which alerts internet users to unsafe websites. This system is unique in Europe.

Belgium has recently been officially represented in the International Counter Ransomware Task Force (ICRTF), a partnership between 25 countries and Interpol.  This is a new step for our country in the fight against ransomware. Thanks to the ICRTF, forces are joined across borders, knowledge is shared and joint actions are set up.  After all, no single country is able to combat ransomware effectively individually. This international partnership represents a major step forward. The Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB) is therefore very pleased to represent Belgium in the ICRTF.

A Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, is a cyber attack that impedes the normal data traffic of a particular service. It can have a major impact on the operations of organisations and businesses, so it is very important to protect yourself against this type of attack.