Cause of Defense outage still unclear; Cyber attack not definitively ruled out: Minister

The cause of the IT outage at the Ministry of Defense that has grounded all flights at Eindhoven Airport and caused issues at various government services is still unclear. Prime Minister Dick Schoof said he had “no idea” what the issue was. Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans also did not want to speculate until the cause has been “determined with 100 percent certainty,” but he said that a cyber attack has not been “definitively” ruled out, NOS and ANP reported.

The IT outage may be in the Netherlands Armed Forces Intergrated Network (NAFIN), sources told the Telegraaf. The NAFIN connects around 180 Defense locations, the Ministries’ data centers, police locations, and part of the C2000 network with which the security services communicate. Several NATO headquarters are also connected to it, as are some private IT companies like Atos and IBM. According to a Telegraaf source, Wednesday’s issues originated at a new Defense data center in Camp New Amsterdam, which was recently connected to the NAFIN.

The Court of Audit is currently investigating the fiber optic network. The investigation examines “how the Minister of Defense ensures that the NAFIN is resilient to both physical and digital cyber attacks,” a spokesperson told the Telegraaf. “We are first looking at possible vulnerabilities in the public-private partnership, such as how responsibilities are divided and whether authorizations are in order. We are also investigating how cyber attacks are detected and what response scenarios are in place.”

The cause of the issue is still under investigation, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense told the Telegraaf without confirming that the NAFIN is involved. She would not comment on possible problems with the NAFIN.

The Ministry of Justice and Security is inventorying all organizations affected by the failure, including some abroad. Defense is working “with all its might” to resolve it, Brekelmans said.

Many affected services are able to continue semi-normally through workarounds. For example, Veiligheidsregio Utrecht told NOS earlier that the emergency services are communicating with each other via phone calls and SMS.

Schoof said that this outage again showed the importance of workarounds. “Vulnerabilities can always occur,” Schoof said. “All energy is focused on resolving it as quickly as possible. But only when we know what the cause is can we say how worrying it is.”