Ministry of Defense calls in external experts to investigate major outage

The Ministry of Defense has commissioned external experts to investigate Wednesday's major ICT outage. It will be a "comprehensive review," and the ministry will "also involve external parties," said Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans.

The hour-long outage of an important Ministry of Defense computer network, which has a reputation for being indestructible, brought several government departments and Eindhoven Airport to a standstill. According to a spokesperson for Veiligheidsregio Utrecht, the outage was first noted at around 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

Some 58 flights were scheduled to land in Eindhoven on Wednesday, including 21 due to arrive before 1 p.m. However, many airlines, such as Transavia and Ryanair, had to cancel their flights due to the IT issue.

Brekelmans is investigating "what exactly happened, how we reacted, and what the communication around the outage was like," he said after a meeting with EU colleagues in Brussels.

The VVD minister could not yet say how long the investigation will take. No decision has yet been taken on the scope or who will carry out the investigation, "so it's still a bit too early." According to Brekelmans, the ministry has also not yet been able to draw any lessons or measures in the pipeline. "We have mainly been working on getting everything back up and running as quickly as possible," he said. Apart from "a few minor after-effects," this has now been achieved.

He is also satisfied with the communication. "For people who are waiting at airports or can't log in at work, every hour that they don't have clarity is very annoying. But we can only tell the outside world exactly what is going on if we are really sure ourselves," says Brekelmans. "If you are not 100 percent sure, then it can also create a lot of uncertainty." Brekelmans believes that the fact that the defense then communicated mainly via X is logical. The idea was to build a bridge to the journalists: "X is a medium that many media outlets monitor."