Number of cyber incidents in Belgium doubles in one year

The number of cyber incidents in Belgium last year more than doubled compared to 2013. In 2014, there were 822 incidents per month on average, compared with 339 in 2013. This is a sevenfold increase compared to 2010, when there were 116 incidents, writes Knack.be based on a report from the federal cyber emergency team CERT.be.

One reason for the increase is that companies and organizations are more aware that CERT.be exists. In 2014, the team received a total of 10,812 reports. "But there are many more cyber incidents,” says Christian Van Heurck, coordinator of CERT.be, in a press release. “We’ve also noticed that the quality of the reports has increased, especially for complex incidents requiring more analysis.”

The most common reports in 2014 had to do with IT infrastructure being scanned by third parties (30.5%), followed by incidents of serious worm and virus outbreaks (29.5%) and vulnerabilities found in systems, servers and sites (21%).