Investments in automated security are a prerequisite for a secure digital economy

Growing digitisation

The Netherlands is experiencing the fast-growing digitisation of processes and services and has thus achieved a strong economic position. Vital sectors such as logistics, healthcare and the manufacturing industry are transforming their business models and processes under the influence of digitisation in order to remain competitive. This growing digitisation makes the Netherlands susceptible to cyber attacks. This is particularly true in light of the fact that the techniques used by cyber criminals to break into corporate and governmental networks are becoming more and more sophisticated.

Cyber attacks are increasingly automated. The expectation for the long term is that there will not be enough trained specialists available to avert the total number of cyber-attacks in time. AI-based solutions make it possible to detect and report anomalous events in a network more quickly than any specialist and thus offer a solution to an ever more pressing problem.

Automated cybersecurity solutions

The major challenge for the implementation of cyber security solutions, including those based on AI, is that data must be exchanged on a large scale and at various levels in order to be able to immediately detect and act on anomalies. An integrated, cross-sectoral approach between the public and private sectors is a prerequisite to achieving automated cybe rsecurity solutions for threat and risk analysis, decision-making and responses that will enable us to meet today’s challenges.

Through this collaboration, we are working towards the development of a modular and flexibly extensible security platform and the development and integration of SOC services automation in order to contribute to:

• A secure and robust digital economy in the Netherlands for end-users of security products.
• Improvements to the cybersecurity sector’s knowledge level so that they can continue to compete on a global level.

Commissioned by the province of South Holland, the Rotterdam-The Hague Metropolitan Area and the municipality of The Hague, the Automated Security consortium started defining the implementation programme in the South Holland region in October this year. Through the acceleration of research and knowledge development in the field of automated security, work is being done on a cyber security policy that will place South Holland at the international forefront.

In the first phase, the consortium focuses on the development of a multi-annual implementation programme to create a targeted and effective cybersecurity approach within a cybersecurity ecosystem of public and private organisations. The cybersecurity ecosystem is crucial for safeguarding the reliability and confidentiality of data and the continuity of the ICT networks and systems of cross-sectoral application areas, such as bridges and locks in the Province of South Holland.

With the support of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy (EZK), the Automated Security Operations (ASOP) consortium was launched in July 2020. The start of the consortium builds on an exploratory phase carried out with financial contributions from the Province of South Holland, the municipality of The Hague and the MRDH. Over the next three years and in a public-private partnership between Dutch cybersecurity companies, public organisations and TNO, the consortium aims to develop an automated security platform which will enable organisations to detect and respond to automated cyberattacks more quickly.