NL Times reports that the Dutch police were aware of gaps in their cybersecurity before a Russian cyber group stole a large amount of police data in September 2024, according to research by Follow the Money. The hackers gained access through an employee’s email account and stole the contact details of almost all 65,000 police officers in the Netherlands, as well as profile photos and personal data.
An internal risk analysis from November 2022 raised concerns about the implementation and security of Microsoft’s M365 cloud, which the police had been using for several years for chat and meeting programmes like Teams. The analysis warned that the cloud entails inherent risks and that state actors in particular would be very interested in gaining access to the cloud environment. The piece highlights that the theft caused major unrest and underscores the tension between useful cloud services and security vulnerabilities.