“Get used to it,” Minister David van Weel (Justice and Security) said after several government agencies were affected by the failure of the Defense Department’s Nafin network. The cause was an error in Nafin’s software code. IT experts believe the consequences of the network failure are far too severe.
Expert Pim Takkenberg, director of Northwave Cyber Security, points in an article by Het Parool to last month’s global outage caused by an error in the antivirus software of Crowdstrike, an American computer security firm. He emphasizes that updates should first be thoroughly tested in a secure, locked environment. In addition, it is essential to always have fallback options available.
It appears that these steps were not followed. While any computer system can have errors, Takkenberg says it is unacceptable, regardless of how understandable the causes of the failure may be in retrospect.
Nafin
Nafin is crucial and heavily secured for the Dutch government. The network includes more than 3,000 kilometers of fiber optic cables and supports essential government tasks. It ensures that ministries, emergency services and Defense sites can communicate effectively with each other.
Several government departments were affected by the outage. The outage led to problems at emergency services, the Coast Guard, the Royal Netherlands Military Constabulary, DigiD, the Municipal Health Service and Eindhoven Airport, among others.
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