“60 percent of Belgian companies have already been hacked at some point and almost 30 percent expect to be hacked in the near future,” says Yves Schellekens (pictured): “The question is therefore not: Are you going to be hacked? Well: when?”
The magnitude of the problem really becomes clear when you realize that a cyber incident is rarely an isolated event. Because companies link together in their supply chains, one cyber incident often affects an entire chain of companies.
Moreover, companies are hacked multiple times. “SMEs in particular invest little in cybersecurity,” says Yves. “And what’s tricky is that even after a hacking they don’t implement the necessary improvements. As a result, they get hacked again a few months later.”
Yet protection is possible. Yves: “Our companies can arm themselves more strongly today with relatively few resources. However, they must make long-term efforts, continuously.” The corporate culture is essential in this: “When attention is paid in this to ‘working cyber-secure’, everyone can also bring this up when things are not going well.”
Together with his fellow expert Patrick Coomans of Sirris/Agoria, Yves Schellekens launches an appeal to our companies to embed cybersecurity in their organizational culture, to build expertise in it and to also explicitly play it off as an asset for digital products developed in our country. Read the full interview with digitaletoekomst.be here. (only in Dutch).
