Belgium’s cyber security chief says: Europe faces an 'enormous security problem' and it is American in nature as …

Belgium's cybersecurity chief, Miguel De Bruycker, has revealed that Europe faces an "enormous security problem" due to its heavy dependency on American companies for digital infrastructure. In a recent interview, the director of the Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium (CCB) said that Europe has fallen so far behind the US in digital infrastructure that it has “lost the internet”. De Bruycker told the Financial Times that it was "currently impossible" to store data fully in Europe because US companies dominate digital infrastructure across the continent.

The Belgian official also warned that Europe's cyber defences even depend on the cooperation of private companies, most of which are American.“We've lost the whole cloud. We have lost the internet, let's be honest. If I want my information 100 per cent in the EU . . . keep on dreaming. You're setting an objective that is not realistic. In cyberspace, everything is commercial. Everything is privately owned,” he added. This dependence represents an "enormous security problem" for the EU, said De Bruycker, who has led the CCB since it was founded a decade ago. Beyond security concerns, Europe is also missing out on crucial new technologies being developed in the US and elsewhere, he noted. These include cloud computing and artificial intelligence, both of which are vital for defending European countries against cyberattacks. These comments raise concerns within the European security community about the EU's digital infrastructure falling into the hands of foreign actors.

How CCB chief Miguel De Bruycker said about improving Europe’s cybersecurity

Europe needs to develop its own capabilities to enhance innovation and security, De Bruycker said, adding that legislation such as the EU's AI Act, which regulates the fast-developing technology, was "blocking" innovation. He suggested that EU governments should support private efforts to build scale in areas such as cloud computing or digital identification technologies.It could be similar to when European countries jointly created the planemaker Airbus, he said: "Everybody was supporting the Airbus initiatives decades ago. We need the same initiative on [an] EU level in the cyber domain."Companies such as OVHcloud in France and Schwarz Digital in Germany already provide essential digital infrastructure, according to IT experts.EU countries have been worried about their reliance on US tech companies such as Amazon, with growing calls to increase Europe's "technological sovereignty.” However, De Bruycker said those discussions were often "religious" and lacked focus. "I think on an EU level we should clearly identify what sovereignty means to us in the digital domain. Instead of putting that focus on how can we stop the US 'hyperscalers', maybe we put our energy in... building up something by ourselves,” he noted.Belgium, as a host of the EU institutions and NATO, has faced increased hybrid attacks allegedly staged by Russia, with more cyber assaults and drone incursions into its airspace since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.Last year, Belgium experienced five waves of DDoS attacks lasting days, in which compromised devices overwhelmed the websites of businesses and government agencies, temporarily shutting them down. De Bruycker said the attacks typically targeted up to 20 different organisations per day, with "Russian hacktivists" generally behind them. Although it was unclear whether the Kremlin was directly sponsoring them, the attacks typically followed as a response to anti-Russian statements by politicians."Sometimes . . . it's not even a Belgian official, it's an EU official who has said something in Brussels, and they start to attack," he said.Although such attacks have increased, De Bruycker does not see them as particularly harmful and says they are primarily aimed at disruption. He said, "It's temporary; it's not stealing any information. It's really disturbing the normal functioning of the website or the portal."After Russia invaded Ukraine, the US hyperscalers were crucial in helping salvage data from Russian attacks, De Bruycker added.He also expressed confidence in continued cooperation with American companies to crack down on bad actors, despite US tech companies having aligned themselves closely with the Trump administration, which has repeatedly signalled it would step away from supporting Europe's security.