The Cyber Security coalition, which is made up of 50 private and public companies as well as scientists, reported on Monday that cybercrime is costing Belgium € 3.5 billion per year. This is more than one per cent of gross domestic product. The coalition is made up of national cybercrime research network CERT.be, Belgian platform for coordination, collaboration and knowledge-B CCentre, the Solvay Brussels School, the Federation of Enterprises in Belgium, and Proximus.
The starting point is that the fight against cybercrime in Belgium is highly fragmented; therefore close cooperation is needed to deal with this phenomenon. The coalition will gather fifty people from the academic and business world as well as the authorities to exchange information. The goal is to make Belgium a cybercrime "conscious" country.
According to figures from the coalition, hacking and phishing has increased at an alarming rate. CERT.be received 751,000 reports of infected computers in the first half of 2014, which is an average of 614 incidents per month, an increase of 80% since 2013.
According to a FEB survey, 66% of companies do not have enough information in order to develop an efficient approach to cyber security. Over three-quarters of these companies do not know the rules or the competent organizations.
(Source: Belga)
