Flemish Minister of Local Authorities Bart Somers is working with Minister-President Jan Jambon, responsible for ICT, on a tool whereby local authorities affected by a cyber attack can start up minimal services in an emergency cloud environment. 1.25 million euros will be allocated for this.
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Somers announced the initiative in the Flemish Parliament on Tuesday in a reply to Wim Verheyden (Vlaams Belang). The item is on the agenda of the Council of Ministers on Friday.
After the extensive cyber attacks on Antwerp and Diest, Minister Somers announced the establishment of a ‘war room’ on Monday. On Tuesday he explained more. The Flemish government will set up a ‘cyber response team’ to which local authorities can turn for support. This bundles expertise from ABB, Digital Flanders, Audit Flanders and the VVSG. The federal Center for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB) will also cooperate. The cyber response team can be reached from Thursday 14 December at [email protected].
The minister pointed out that the Flemish government has already started a lot since the first cyber attack on a local government in Willebroek. For example, the cyber-safe municipalities project was launched in 2020 and will be rolled out further in 2023. In addition, local governments can rely on ethical hacking. 138 boards have already participated.
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In addition, 2 million euros has been set aside in 2020 for the co-financing of local cyber security audits. An additional 200,000 euros will be provided for this in 2023. So far, 144 municipalities have had such an audit carried out. “This means that just over two thirds of the municipalities have used one or both tools, which shows the willingness of the municipalities to protect themselves against cyber attacks,” says Bart Somers.
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The hackings and audits show that most municipalities cannot guarantee that they will be able to resume services after a few days after a serious incident.
Not all measures have been rolled out yet
Minister Somers pointed out that Antwerp and Diest had a cyber security audit carried out, but that not all measures had yet been rolled out.
Several committee members were concerned about what will happen to the captured data. Maxim Veys (Vooruit) asked whether there is a chance that the hacking of the Antwerp system could also cause problems for other municipalities. Brecht Warnez (CD&V) regretted that not every local government subscribes to the Flemish support offer regarding cyber security. “It is clear that today there are municipalities that do not subscribe to the Flemish offer. That in itself is not bad. Among them, there are boards that are not involved in this at all today, which is a bad thing,” he said.
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